


all your flaws and scars

by hitlikehammers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (So Emotional Handjobs), Emotional Sexing (though mostly in the form of handjobs), Fluff, Love Never Dies and Whatnot, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Near Death Experiences, Parallels Across a Century's-Worth of Devotion, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Romance, So Much Unfathomable Love, Then and Now, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-09-19 20:51:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9459965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: For as long as they've had one another, for as much as things have changed: it's never gotten old. They've never gotten bored. They've never stopped findingnewways to adore one another.They've never loved each other any less.





	1. Constellation

**Author's Note:**

> It's the Bard's Day, so I thought it worthwhile to start posting this, given that the inimitable [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad) convinced me this is indeed a chapter-fic, not a oneshot-fic. In any case, it's written, updates will be quick, etc. etc.
> 
> First part of each chapter is then/WWII or before; second part of each chapter is now/post-defrost. Because these boys never stop finding ways to love each other, and maybe the new ways aren't always so different from the old.
> 
> Title credit [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvP_OwVSFpk).

There’s not much strength in his body, and Steve hates it—he should be used to it now, but he _hates_ it—so he doesn’t have much strength, and when he gasps it’s more a choke; when he aims to flinch away from the slabs of ice masquerading as hands as they slip around his waist, it’s more a pathetic excuse for a shudder. 

“What did you _do_?” he rasps as Bucky presses the rest of his sub-zero temperature flesh against Steve’s fevered body, chest to feet: and Bucky’s usually a furnace, really, and normally that’s a boon, but when Steve’s sick like this Bucky’s cooler than Steve, sure, but no help.

But this. This is _cold_ , and it should be worrying.

Except that it’s fucking _heavenly_.

“Took a cool bath.”

“Cool?” Steve nearly moans, because god. _God_ , he can feel the heat leaching from him, slow and tortuous but each heartbeat that doesn’t push lava through his veins, that doesn’t make him feel like fire, like his brain’s hot enough to melt: even a tiny reprieve, little by little with every moment in Bucky’s arms—even that is a goddamn miracle.

 _Bucky_ is a fucking _miracle_.

“Stayed in for a while,” Bucky murmurs into Steve’s neck, all casual-like. “There’s still too much of a draft in there to risk you taking a soak, so.”

Steve attempts something close to a snort. “So you decided you’d bring the North Pole to me?”

Bucky’s lips press to the clammy skin of his throat, the rapid-fire of his pulse.

“Something like that.”

Steve feels the way that the proof of his smoldering flesh, his endless-bounding blood: he can feel the way that it shivers through Bucky deeper than any cold; Steve feels it fullest in the way Bucky holds him closer, and if Steve were of wholly-sound mind, he’d wonder just how cold, just how dangerously _long_ Bucky stayed in the water to still be such a balm against him, even as he presses them closer, holds him all the tighter.

“This okay?” Bucky asks hoarsely, more a breath than a voice, and Steve only hums in reply.

“Good,” Bucky kisses the crook of his neck again; “Good,” and he rests his head there as he sighs, rubbing frigid hands up and down Steve’s chest, easing how he struggles against every inhale. 

“Oh, Stevie,” Bucky whispers, a little wet in the sound, and he’s on Steve’s bad side, he probably didn’t think Steve would hear; Steve probably wouldn’t have thought he’d hear it, either.

He does, though. Somehow.

“S’okay, Buck,” Steve mumbles, eyes closed, weak: weak and allowed to be, allowed to curl into Bucky’s body without any shame, without apology now, where he used to resist but he can’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t.

Not ever again.

“S’okay. M’gonna be okay.”

“‘Course you are,” Bucky answers, fierce and automatic, not because it’s thoughtless, no.

Because there is _no other option_ he would ever live to allow.

“Have I told you how much I love this?” Bucky says suddenly, from nowhere in particular after silence reigns for a moment, for a strand of shallow breaths.

“Love what?” Steve huffs, only half a sound.

“You.” Bucky nuzzles against the crown of Steve’s head, tucked now under Bucky’s chin. “The way you fit right here, like this,” and he tightens arms around him once again, “”Close.” And Steve is: close enough to hear the way the words in Bucky’s chest play up with the steady-heavy knock of his heart.

“So close, Stevie,” he whispers into Steve’s hair, cherished. Steve never loved feeling small, or being held, being treated as if he needed to be protected, preserved before— he’d resented it, wholly and without reprieve. 

But then there was this; this thing they became where somehow, nothing changed, except all the things unseen. 

“And this,” Bucky carries on, tracing the hard line of Steve’s neck where he’s curled up against Bucky’s frame, following it with a fingertip to the point of Steve’s jaw. “Elegant-like and all,” Bucky’s soft grin is audible in his voice, is physical in the shape of his lips on Steve’s brow:

“Better’n I deserve.”

Lies. Always lies but Steve likes the rumble of Bucky’s heart in the blood and the words, all tangled up at the same time, likes it far too much to interrupt just then; he’s tired, and he’s safe, and Bucky knows.

Bucky _knows_.

“And these.” 

First it’s the touch of Bucky’s fingernail, softer than to scratch, then the tip of his nose, then his tongue: the same pattern. A stretched sort of triangle on Steve’s shoulder blade.

“They’re like,” Bucky’s lips drag the lines as he talks; “like a constellation.”

“Ain’t no constellation that looks like that,” Steve protests, half-hearted; but they don’t, though. They’re just freckles.

“And you’re an expert astronomer, just picked that up in your spare time?” “Bucky fires back, still tracing. “You can’t even see these, anyway.”

“We got a mirror.” Steve buries himself, just a little petulantly, closer against Bucky’s sternum.

“It’s a new one, then. Brand new constellation,” Bucky declares: “Stevieopia.”

And Steve can’t help but to snort, which sets him to coughing, which sets breathing to the point of a trial.

“Shh, easy, easy.” Bucky puts his hands on Steve’s back, rubs in a practiced rhythm to ease the work of his lungs, and it works, because Bucky’s learned what works.

It works probably, in part, because it’s _Bucky_.

“You’re certifiable, Barnes,” Steve tells him, as soon as he gets his breath, his voice back. “You know that?”

“For _you_ ,” Bucky hums, pure honey dripping from the words as he gathers Steve close, hands sliding against his skin.

“Sap,” Steve lobs back without any barb to it, and then realises, as he presses into Bucky’s chest greedily, that the heart under his cheek is softer, peaceful. The hands on his skin move freely, glide across sweat-soaked flesh, and _hell_.

His fever’s broken.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The night’s warm. Sticky. The kind that wants so bad to be remembered that it clings to you, forces your hand.

The cool of Bucky’s left hand on his body is a goddamn _gift_.

“Whatcha doing?” Steve asks lazily, eyes closed as Bucky’s fingers draw cool circles along his stomach, tickle the hair trailing up toward his navel: the motion is constant, steady as a heartbeat and calm, yet Bucky’s breath is coming at strange intervals just to the side of the crook of Steve’s neck, odd little puffs that send admittedly delicious shivers up Steve’s spine but still: there’s no rhyme to them. No reason. 

“Nothing,” Bucky murmurs, and the motion of his lips makes each breath a kiss, back and forth and back and again, over and over the same: intentional. A pattern.

“Don’t feel like nothing,” Steve breaths back, something close on a purr. He’s never felt so at ease before. So _right_. He hadn’t thought it could be possible, and it still strikes him a little dumb sometimes. 

He hadn’t thought he’d ever have _this_ , ever again.

“Mmm,” Bucky hums, the vibration subtle but extreme to Steve’s senses, heightened as a rule but attuned to this, to _him_. “Just,” Bucky starts, and then presses his mouth open against Steve’s shoulder, the tip of his tongue tracing out the same shape again without having to look, to see: it sets Steve aflame, that touch—that intimacy.

But it’s nothing on what happens in Steve’s body, in Steve’s chest when Bucky whispers:

“I’m stargazing.”

And the past rushes in his veins, and the present beats hard against his ribs, tightens in his throat and Steve can’t, he _can’t_ do anything less than to grab Bucky, to flip them both around and claim his mouth swift enough, hard enough, deep enough to taste the swell of Steve’s whole goddamn soul for those words, for that memory, for this love, for, for—

For this, here and now, despite everything.

For _them_.

And it’s sweet, it’s explosive: it is heaven as much as any star has to belong to, has to be.


	2. Sunshine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky’s not _complaining_. It’s just, they’ve been sprawled out like this a long fucking time.
> 
> “Aren’t you tired yet?”
> 
> “Serum, dumbass,” Steve mouths against his spine; “Are _you_ tired?”
> 
> Bucky smirks. “Not what I meant.”
> 
> They both know that, though.
> 
> “Never,” Steve exhales, voice tight with feeling as he kisses the back of Bucky’s neck like the worth of his soul is hanging on that one kiss, that one point of contact in this world and the next. “Not _ever_ , you understand me?”
> 
> “Crazy motherfucker,” Bucky huffs, but leans into Steve’s warmth, just a little. “But you always were, weren’t you?”
> 
> “No crazier than you,” Steve nuzzles into the crook of Bucky’s neck. “Throwin’ your lot in with the likes of me.”

Never let it be stated out loud, but Steve’s pout when he’s mad at the world is one of the most adorable things in Bucky’s world. He could have fallen just for that, really. It’s just Bucky’s luck that Stevie’s perfect in every which way he can imagine, so the pouting is really just icing on the goddamn cake.

“Ain’t you ever listen to your mama, Rogers?” Bucky smirks, tossing an apple into the air where he’s lounging near the window, sprawled over a chair that barely holds his weight before catching the fruit and taking a loud bite from the flesh. “You keep scowling like that, your face is gonna stick that way.”

“Asshole,” Steve mutters as he takes his eraser from between his teeth, swaps his pencil in the space left bare as he rubs a mistake from his sketchpad—oral fixation, that boy, and damn if Bucky doesn’t benefit.

Like he’d said: perfect in _every_ way.

“It’s just a summer shower,” Bucky tries to reason with him. “Be gone by tomorrow.”

“And tough luck if I’d like the goddamn option to go out in the rain _now_ , right?”

“Patience is a virtue, Stevie,” Bucky says, tossing his head back and closing his eyes. The cool dark that seeps in, drafty windows that they’ve got, is glorious against the heat they’ve been having—and Steve needs that mild medium space, breathes easiest in it, but his lungs don’t need the dampness, and his body, just over the last bit of too much chill, doesn’t need the stress of a full-blown cold from dragging wet clothes around in the downpour.

Steve sighs dramatically. “It’s summer, damnit,” he stews in his displeasure. “Is a little sun, a little blue sky too much to ask?” Bucky can feel Steve’s gaze narrow on him, different from the usual, when he’s just looking every few seconds as he works on a sketch.

“I mean, come on. It’s miserable in here, not to mention out there. Don’t _you_ want some fresh air, some sunshine?” Steve asks, shifting arguments for the sake of getting some sympathy, some shared feeling; _willing_ Bucky to agree, but yeah—tough luck, basically.

“Yeah, I mean, the grey out there’s ugly, no mistake about that,” Bucky says, his only concession. “But baby, I’ve got my sunshine.”

Steve frowns, and Bucky grins; sits up and crosses the room, curls around Steve’s frame and cards hands through his pale-glow hair.

“Got my blue skies,” Bucky breathes at Steve’s jaw ‘til he shivers, lifting Steve’s chin with the tip of his finger until those sapphire-bright eyes catch the rays of sunshine that are Steve and Steve alone, and glimmer in that way they’ve got that changes the rhythm of Bucky’s beating blood.

And when Steve shoots him a glare, half annoyance and half disbelief that Bucky’s even saying this shit, Bucky takes it one step further, because that’s what he does; because he can.

And for the record? He’s off key because it _means_ to be.

“You are my sunshine,” he starts in a falsetto, and Steve’s jaw drops.

“Oh _hell_ no—”

“My only sunshine.” Bucky’s grin just widens, cat with his goddamn cream as Steve turns to face him head-on.

“You make me hap— _fuck_!” Bucky genuinely doesn’t even see it coming, hand to god, and he’s a little proud of Steve for getting up under him and flipping him off the sofa with those scrawny thighs just like Bucky’d been trying to teach him for forever, and while Bucky gives into the tussle like they're kids again for a second, gets Steve on his back, he doesn’t fight all that hard when Steve rolls them over and brackets Bucky’s middle between his legs because, well.

Why the hell _would_ he?

“Sap,” Steve mocks him, just a little, but he leans in for a kiss that turns hot against the cool on the air and it’s gorgeous, so Bucky figures Steve doesn’t really mind one bit. 

“I never said it was ugly,” Steve moves lips against Bucky’s as they catch their breaths, and Bucky frowns, uncomprehending, dragging those lips down with him. Steve pecks quick and pulls back just enough that Bucky feels the warm exhale of his lungs on his skin.

“The grey outside,” he clarifies, eyes glinting in that heart-twisting, blood-surging way that sets fire under Bucky’s ribs. “Wouldn’t ever say that,” his voice grows low, as he reaches out and traces Bucky’s cheekbones, studies him with the intensity of an artist, with the affection of a lover.

“Your eyes are that color,” Steve breathes soft, still, and Bucky melts for it, just a little, though he’d never admit as much. “The color of life, you know? Where it falls. In the rain.”

And Bucky could call Steve as much of a sap as Bucky is, as Steve’d complained in kind; Bucky could laugh it off, or scoff at the nonsense, but what he does instead is kiss Steve deep enough to taste truth off his tongue, and that’s better, really.

That’s better than anything else he could do. 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Bucky’s not complaining, exactly. 

Scratch that.

Bucky’s not _complaining_ at all. It’s just, he can’t see the clock or anything, but his sense of time these days is pretty impeccable. He thinks it’s a coping mechanism, making up for lost time.

Pun unintended.

And they’ve been sprawled out like this a long fucking time.

“Aren’t you tired yet?”

“Serum, dumbass,” Steve mouths against his spine, kissing up the line where Bucky lies on his side. “Are _you_ tired?”

Bucky smirks. “Not what I meant.”

They both know that, though.

“Never,” Steve exhales, voice tight with feeling as he kisses the back of Bucky’s neck like the worth of his soul is hanging on that one kiss, that one point of contact in this world and the next. “Not _ever_ , you understand me?”

“Crazy motherfucker,” Bucky huffs, but leans into Steve’s warmth, just a little. “But you always were, weren’t you?”

Okay. Maybe he leans into that warmth a lot.

“No crazier than you,” Steve nuzzles into the crook of Bucky’s neck. “Throwin’ your lot in with the likes of me.”

“You had me from that first day,” Bucky murmurs, plainly into the dark as he reaches with his left hand, back across the far edge of his own beating heart to tangle with Steve’s. “Black eye almost faded against all that blue fire.” He pulls Steve to him as much as he leverages that body against his own as he turns, brings them face to face to trace that perfect cheek. “Clear skies and burning stars, all at once.”

“Poetic you are, all of a sudden,” Steve whispers, eyes so fucking soft.

“I contain fuckin’ multitudes, punk.” 

Steve snorts, grazes his teeth against Bucky’s skin. “Whitman would be proud.”

“Ah, Mr. Cultured,” Bucky teases, as Steve tongues against the puckered scars where his shoulder used to be. “Knew you read my books when I wasn’t looking.”

Steve laughs, and then presses his lips to the seam between Bucky’s flesh and the metal that makes him; marks him. 

“I love you,” Steve says, just there, and it means more for it. Always does.

“I know it,” Bucky sighs, as Steve lavishes the line of scar and steel with the endless wiles of his lips. “Can’t explain it,” Bucky shakes his head, but shudders halfway through for the tickle of Steve’s hair; “but I do know it.”

“I love this,” Steve kisses up and down Bucky’s left arm, licking in the creases between the plating, nosing across the inhuman lines and making them worth something. 

“I love these,” he peppers the scars with his mouth again, makes them sacred and beloved in those moments in a way Bucky can’t quite handle, but can’t quite deny—not then, not in those beautiful seconds that live beyond words when Steve sees everything, touches everything, makes everything his own, bad and worse and _still_. 

“I love what you are,” Steve kisses up Bucky’s neck, exhales into his hair, sending the strands dancing. “I hate what they did but I love that you’re here, that you’re with me, that you can, that we...”

And he trails off, and Bucky turns to catch his lips, and they’re a fucking pair, aren’t they?

Always have been. 

“I love what you’ve been, what you can be, what we _will_ be,” Steve says to the space beneath Bucky’s chin; rests there for a second before he reaches, braces against Bucky’s arms. “I love your strength,” he runs his hands quick down Bucky’s sides and massages into his thighs just the same.

“Your mind,” he rests their foreheads against each other, and they breathe in tandem without even trying. “This,” Steve lets his thumb dip dangerously into the divot of Bucky’s pelvis, just enough to tease a groan; “this,” he presses the line of his nose against the trail of hair up to Bucky’s navel, trembling just a little before he starts, shifts up to press open lips against Bucky’s sternum, palms splayed over his pecs.

“Goddamn, I love _this_ ,” Steve moans, circling his nipples first with his fingertips, then with his mouth on either side: “these,” and Bucky’s the one trembling, now, because _fuck_.

“I love your heart,” Steve murmurs, licking shapes around Bucky’s chest, still playing with his nipples as he breathes out against the wet trails of his mouth. “So open, so giving. Enough to hold out against the types of things any other heart would have gave out for.”

“Steve—”

“Mine would have.” Steve meets Bucky’s eyes straight on; too bright. Bucky’s own sting, goddamnit.

They always do.

“ _I_ would have.”

And it’s either sob or take Steve in entire: he chooses the latter, takes his lips and nips and sucks and consumes him, and Steve moves just the same.

“I love breathing you in,” Steve gasps, moves to slip his tongue back deep; “I love tasting you.”

Bucky, for his part, can only moan, can only whimper in agreement.

“I love these,” Steve’s hands brace his hips, finger tracing at his abs. “Firm. Real.”

Steve pulls away, tears unshed, all diamonds in his gaze.

“ _Proof_.”

And Bucky trembles when Steve begins to suck on the pulse in Bucky’s neck, mouthing there:

“Proof.”

And then again, at his mouth, at the swell of his bottom lip.

“Proof.”

And they kiss slow, now: sweet with it. A different facet of a love that holds all things. They kiss, slow and sweet, until there’s nothing else to have, to do, to be, save hold to each other, and breathe. 

Breathe.

“Your eyes are beautiful, you know.”

Bucky snorts, and ducks his head, but Steve shifts, draws his eyes back to meet Steve’s own.

“No,” Steve warns, sadness in his gaze, just a hint of it, but more than Bucky’s keen to bear. “No, don’t do that.”

So Bucky meets those eyes, and doesn’t move. Lets Steve cup his face, and trace his cheekbones. Lets his lashes flutter against Steve’s fingertips. 

“I used to think they were like storm clouds, but that was just child’s play,” Steve says softly; a confessional. “Tryin’ to be the next Monet or some shit, thinking I knew my stuff. But these aren’t storm clouds,” he pauses, waits for Bucky’s gaze to lift again.

“They’re oceans.”

“Oh yeah,” Bucky huffs with a smirk. “That’s _way_ less pretentious, Mister Ar _tiste_.”

“Can it,” Steve leans, and nips at the corner of Bucky’s mouth in warning. “I’m bein’ serious.”

“Right,” Bucky deadpans, but lets him go on with it: “serious.”

Steve waits for the grins to melt from them both before he runs his fingers across Bucky’s cheeks again, grounding them.

“Powerful. Depthless,” Steve starts to say, and it takes a moment for Bucky to remember that Steve’s describing his eyes. What Steve sees in his eyes.

What Steve sees in _him_.

“Endless, all consuming,” Steve leans forward, presses their cheeks together and whispers straight into the shell of Bucky ear: 

“The better part of everything.”

And Bucky’s breath catches, and Steve’s hand rests on the center of his chest, and he pulls back to look at Bucky when he says it one more time:

“ _Everything_.”

And Bucky holds Steve close, shakes his head against something he can’t name, and he can barely breathe, if he’s honest, full as his chest feels just then, but goddamn, he’s gotta say something, gotta do something.

He doesn’t plan it, but the sound comes, unbidden. Humming, and Steve chuckles, wet against him, because they both remember, now.

It’s soft, and faint, but the song’s message is clear to the universe writ large:

_Don’t you take my sunshine away_.


	3. Risk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You trying to say that you mean less?” Steve asks, baffled; enraged. “That I _love_ you _less_?”
> 
> Bucky huffs.
> 
> “If the shoe—”
> 
> And Steve can’t stop himself, can’t stop the way he shoves Bucky. _Hard_.
> 
> “Fuck you,” Steve snarls. “ _Fuck_ you, if you even dare to _think_ those _words_.”
> 
> Goddamnit, Bucky just glares, and Steve’s heart just _hurts_.
> 
> “What I feel for you is bigger than any other thing I’ve ever known,” Steve says, absolutely honest, straight and plain and utterly sure, utterly true. “Love, hate, grief, fear, righteous indignation,” Steve shakes his head, folds his arms across his chest less as a barrier and more for comfort. “It’s bigger than any of those things, and more.”
> 
> Bucky doesn’t move, doesn’t turn back to look at Steve but barely breathes. Steve watches his shoulders. Aches a little more. 
> 
> “So don’t you fucking _dare_ think it,” and that’s where Steve’s voice cracks, his heart cracks, but hell if his resolve does: not with this. 
> 
> “You hear me?”

“You.”

Steve’s not expecting it, and that’s what he blames for the way he stumbles against the force of the palm thrust hard, vicious, unforgiving at his sternum. His eyes go wide, less at the push and more at the wild rage in the eyes that follow up from said hand: Bucky’s eyes.

“You are a goddamn _idiot_ ,” Bucky hisses, eyes blazing, flashing bright. “And sometimes I think what you call fucking luck is really just punishment,” Bucky scoffs, and pushes Steve one more time before turning away with a growls: “ _My_ fucking punishment.”

And that hits Steve harder in the sternum than any physical blow, because he’s long learned to hear what’s not said beneath that kind of anger.

“Buck, I don’t—”

“How many times, huh?” Bucky retorts, sharp. “How many times did you leave yourself open, practically _inviting_ someone to shoot your ass where I can’t cover, beyond my range?” 

Bucky’s hand reaches, hovers, retracts as his scowl only deepens, his eyes only narrow. 

“Did you not _feel_ that bullet graze your fancy new muscles?” Bucky sneers, eyes fixed on said graze, already-healed, just a phantom mark if anything at all but Bucky’s hand reaches again, makes contact this time against Steve’s chest. 

“Just here,” Bucky says, his voice suddenly rough as he runs a thumb across Steve’s left pec. “Close enough, almost…”

He trails off, blinks hard, and when he looks Steve in the eye again, the fire’s right back where it was to start with. 

“How many _times_ did you nearly give me a fucking heart attack today, Steven Grant, huh?” Bucky challenges through clenched teeth. “Did you even _think_?” And then, his voice dips, wraps a fist arounds Steve’s heart for the drop as he asks:

“Do you even _give_ a damn?”

“Don’t,” Steve’s voices is a rasp, a cracked thing that draws blood as he glares at Bucky, hard. “Don’t you fucking _dare_ act like I don’t care—”

“You sure as _hell_ coulda fooled me!” Bucky lashes, yells loud, like the words could claw. 

They do. Good _god_ , they do.

“Buck,” Steve tries to reason, tries to talk him down, tries to, to…

Tries to make it okay. Tries to justify it, because beyond Bucky, it’s the only other truth he knows, and he needs it.

He needs it.

“Look, Buck, you know I can’t just stand by—”

“‘Course you can’t,” Bucky snorts. “You are physically incapable of just standing by, which must be some deeper fucking issue than your fancy serum shit could fix because good god _damn_ , you’re still as much of a fucking self-sacrificing, selfish martyr as you’ve ever been.”

“Fuck you, James Barnes,” Steve spits back at him, wounded and out for blood because Bucky knows how to hurt him, Bucky’s the only one who can hurt him. “I will not, and I will never be, the man who stands down from a fight.”

“‘Cause you ain’t got nothing to prove,” Bucky says it, tired as it is, but it still sears.

Except it’s different, now. It’s honest, and Bucky’s eyes aren’t trying to stop him, even, not exactly. 

“You don’t, Steve. Not anymore.” Bucky tilts his head, takes a step forward. 

“So what _is_ it?”

Steve breathes in deep. “ _Someone_ has to—”

“You’ve got a team, a squad, a fucking _army_ to do more than half the stunts you pull,” Bucky cuts him off. “In formation, within regs, no fanfare or fireworks but _done_ , Steve. So what _is_ it?”

Steve swallows. Squares his shoulders; his jaw.

“My heart fuckin’ _stops_ , every time,” Bucky says, voice dangerously low, face suddenly dangerously close. “Do you even _understand_ that?”

Steve does. Steve absolutely does because Bucky on that table, Bucky in this war, Bucky, _Bucky_ —

“It always has, but this is,” Bucky stretches arms. “This is bigger, this, this…” Bucky turns, throws his hands upward, buries them in his hair, tugs hard.

“I’m sorry,” Steve tries, wanting to stop Bucky’s reeling, _needing_ to, but Bucky only scoffs at him, turns away from his outstretched arm, his offered hand.

“I’m serious. I’m _sorry_ , Buck.”

“Sorry like you’re gonna try and cut it back some?” Bucky asks, blunt as anything. “Or sorry like you’re trying to get out from under my abiding fucking _rage_ at your ass, huh?”

And of course Bucky sees it. He’s always seen it. Always known.

“You’re asking a question you already know the answer to,” Steve says, voice small, because he can’t lie to Bucky. He can’t, not here, not about this even if he wanted to. And he does, about this.

He wishes he could, more than he wishes for most things.

“But I _am_ sorry, for that.”

And that, at least, is true.

“Of course you fucking are,” Bucky mutters, the fight bleeding out of him, the space it leaves filling up with something too much like desperation for Steve’s liking, for the tightness threatening to knock Steve down from inside his ribs.

“Goddamnit, Stevie,” Bucky damn near whispers, vows as close as anything; “I will _not_ let you go to your grave before me.”

Steve steps close, then, close enough to feel their heat mingling in between bodies, between breaths. “Took the words right out of my mouth.”

Bucky’s eyes harden, and Steve’s heart sinks.

“Bullshit.” And Bucky backs away, shakes his head and turns away before he snarls: “ _Bullshit_ , Steve.”

“The _hell_ is that supposed to mean?” Steve feels his hackles rise, not just for the insult he senses but his own protectiveness for the implication, for what he thinks, what impossible thing he _thinks_ might be said, might be meant—

“You trying to say that you mean less?” Steve asks, baffled; enraged. “That I _love_ you _less_?”

Bucky huffs.

“If the shoe—”

And Steve can’t stop himself, can’t stop the way he shoves Bucky. _Hard_.

“Fuck you,” Steve snarls. “ _Fuck_ you, if you even dare to _think_ those _words_.”

And Bucky staggers, just a little.

He should probably stagger more than a little, Steve thinks. It’d make him feel better, make the point he’s trying to make more clear, but goddamnit. 

Goddamnit, Bucky just glares, and Steve’s heart just _hurts_.

Right. Words, then.

“What I feel for you is bigger than any other thing I’ve ever known,” Steve says, absolutely honest, straight and plain and utterly sure, utterly true. “Love, hate, grief, fear, righteous indignation,” Steve shakes his head, folds his arms across his chest less as a barrier and more for comfort. “It’s bigger than any of those things, and more.”

Bucky doesn’t move, doesn’t turn back to look at Steve but barely breathes. Steve watches his shoulders. Aches a little more. 

“So don’t you fucking _dare_ think it,” and that’s where Steve’s voice cracks, his heart cracks, but hell if his resolve does: not with this. 

“You hear me?”

There’s silence. Bucky still doesn’t move; doesn’t turn around. Steve only hears his own pulse in his ears. 

“That an order,” Bucky’s voice breaks through between heavy, weighed-down beats; “ _Captain_?”

And Steve’s eyes widen when Bucky does turn, gaze focused solely on Steve as he advances, fast, and Steve sees it before it happens, but Bucky’s hands are on his chest and pushing, pinning him swift and fierce against the wall as he leans in and bites out:

“Told you I wasn’t following no _Captain_ into this.”

And Bucky’s breath is hot on Steve’s neck before he presses the length of his torso, and Steve can barely breathe. 

Whether that’s from the force or the contact, well. 

Probably doesn’t matter, either way.

“And believe it or not,” Bucky hisses, and the press of his hips against Steve’s pulls forth a gasp; the roll of them pulls forth a moan. 

“I never took my marching orders from that scrawny punk from Brooklyn, either.”

And Steve’s mouth’s already parted when Bucky dives in and takes, claims, and oh.

Oh, that’s. That.

“Gonna try a little _harder_ , Steve?” Bucky bites against Steve’s bottom lip, grinds again Steve’s dick unforgivingly and Steve never liked being put in his place, being cornered and pressed and pushed before, not ever, but this, _this_ : fuck.

Fuck, and yeah.

Steve thinks he’s gonna try a little harder.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It’s funny, or else it would be, if it wasn’t inevitable, because for all that Steve’s eyes are on his enemy, are on every blow before it comes and every bullet before it hits, his heart keeps far closer tabs on Bucky, wherever Bucky happens to be: at his six, at his side, far afield—doesn’t matter.

Steve knows.

Which is how Steve knows when Bucky goes down, feels it alongside the way he glimpses it just beyond his periphery, impossible.

 _Inevitable_.

He takes down the fucker in front of him: they’re swarmed, outnumbered by these Hydra wannabes causing trouble that he can take care of just a little bit more definitively, now, without colors defining his status, hypocrites dictating his morality. He shuts down every last man standing in his range and leaps, leaves the rest to the team he would never have asked to stand by him but never had to: leaves the rest to them as he runs without breath in his lungs to Bucky’s motionless body on the ground.

Steve has the sinking, fleeting, horrible sensation that _hell_ , he’s watched this scene too many times; he’s lost the soul on him too many goddamn _times_.

Not again.

“No,” he breathes, beyond his knowledge or design, like the beat of his heart pushes it up from his throat, gasps it raw into the world as a plea before he runs, before he turns it into a demand of the universe itself:

“No!” 

He’s on his knees at Bucky’s side, and his eyes watch for any motion of that precious chest as his fingertips press the soft skin beneath his jaw, down his neck and wait for something, wait for _anything_ , press _harder_ —

“You don’t get to fucking do this,” Steve breathes, trembling as he wills some sign of life from that man who _is_ life, _his_ life. Steve chokes a sob back to curl into a growl as he moves, straddles Bucky’s middle without a thought as he snarls against the fates of life and death: 

“You don’t get to keep fucking _leaving_ me.”

He locks his fingers, and begins to press rhythmically above Bucky’s sternum, fucking determined; fucking desperate.

“Are you listening?” Steve says as he leans to breathe, to lift Bucky’s still-static lungs. “Do you hear me?” And he’s pressing harder, violent, fierce as anything because there’s nothing else, there’s nothing left, and he, he—

“God,” he shakes, lips wet with salt as he lays them over Bucky’s without give to them, without response; he slams hard enough to crack a rib as he presses against Bucky’s heart to will its beating, except if will were enough, in this, there’d be no question, there’d be no battle against the Reaper. 

“God _damnit_ , come on!” Steve yells when Bucky doesn’t move, when his lips under Steve’s grow just that little bit cooler, when the minutes start to drag and Steve knows they’ve got more time to languish, they can survive where others can’t but they’re still human, and a human needs a heart to beat, and Steve.

Steve’s heart is Bucky’s as much as it’s his own, and he needs _his_ fucking heart to _beat_.

“Come _on_!”

And he can feel his team’s eyes on him, can sense the palpable questions they’re asking with their eyes behind his back: who’s going to step in, who’s going to stop him, who’s going to tell Steve _enough_ , who’s going to pull him away and concede the obvious, the unconscionable, the, the...

“God, oh god, no,” Steve whispers, hands stuttering on Bucky’s breathless, beatless chest as he takes, as he curses, as he prays; “No come on, you can’t, you _can’t_ take him, you—”

And Steve’s in between pressing hands to the void in a fruitless bid against the Devil beneath Bucky’s ribs, between that and swallowing a grief that he knows will eat him alive—Steve’s caught in the liminal space when hands find his own, finally: tear his touch from Bucky’s chest and stay his hopeless, helpless attempts to bring back, to live on, to—

“Hey, _hey_!”

Steve stills, suspended in time, in this place where the impossible apparently awaits. 

That _voice_. 

He looks down at the hands on his own. They’re lacing fingers through his, they’re gathering against where Steve knows he’s broken bones for his efforts: they’re strong. They’re warm.

They’re not the hands that Steve was expecting. They’re not the hands Steve thought he’d ever feel again, holding _him_. He lets his fingers drift as he stares breathless, not yet daring to look to the face of the body beneath him but transfixed by the hands that draw his touch more delicately to the center of the chest: Steve reaches to press against the wrist just before his hand comes to settle on the heart and oh. 

Oh.

That’s a pulse. That’s a pulse Steve thought was lost forever. For too many moments. Too many useless heartbeats he’d have given up whole for Bucky’s in exchange; that would have meant nothing all over again if not for a miracle, and Steve doesn’t know what he did to get miracles like these, left and right, but he’ll take them. 

Fuck: his hand rests against the rise-and-fall, the squeeze-and-give that drives the chest beneath him, and _fuck_.

“Easy, punk. Those bones take a while to heal, y’know,” Bucky murmurs, purrs with a quirk of his lips as he clasps Steve’s hands, stills their assault on Bucky’s chest to rest, to hold against his heartbeat, his _heartbeat_ , and Steve can’t stop the tears when the dam breaks, when he breaks along with it.

He looks up, because he can’t help it. Because in that moment, it all shifts, and he needs to see that face alight, those eyes watching _him_ , more than he fears.

“Bucky?” he breathes, and the hands holding his just press his palms close to that rising-falling chest.

“Last time I checked,” Bucky says, letting his right hand splay to hold Steve’s touch to him as he reaches to cup Steve’s face, and hell if Steve doesn’t whimper, doesn’t have more tears to shed for the feel of that hand, of warm, well-loved metal on skin. 

“Sorry about that, babydoll,” Bucky says softly, eyes full of regret, and Steve huffs, wet and wondering and still this side of broken.

“ _Sorry_?” he asks, dumbfounded, still aching for what he felt, what he thought, what he _knew_ —

“Bucky, you were,” and he can’t say it, he can’t _say_ it. “You, your…” and Steve’s mindful as he can be to the damage his frantic compressions had done to Bucky’s ribs, but he needs to feel, then, just a little bit firmer, a little bit closer: to know that Bucky’s lungs weren’t still anymore, that his heart wasn’t gone another, that he’s here, he’s here, he’s _here_.

Bucky breathes in deeper, like he knows it, like he can read Steve and will give him what he needs even if it means his own pain, and god, Steve loves him. Steve doesn’t know what love even _means_ outside of Bucky. 

“Think the Winter Soldier never learned how to play dead?” Bucky says softly, stroking Steve’s cheekbone, his jawline, drawing circles around the pulse in his neck until it starts to calm for that steady, gentle cadence. “You don’t survive this long without a few tricks.”

“It was Zola’s idea, which gets me every time, let me tell you,” Bucky says, pulling his hand away for a moment, and Steve keens a little in protest, but he follows the way Bucky draws attention to the joinings of metal at his wrist, presses on it indicatively. “Killswitch, for punishment or necessity,” he taps without pressure a complicated pattern along the divots. 

“But now _I_ have the trigger,” Bucky says ruefully, almost proud. “Knocks you out good for about fifteen minutes, which they figured was long enough for most people to take the hint.” He shrugs, reaches to brace at the crook of Steve’s neck, holding him firm and steady and never making to move Steve’s own hand away from his beating heart. “Also well within the timeframe the serum course-corrects any damage the lack of oxygen to the brain would cause almost on demand, so that’s handy.”

Steve blinks, takes it in, tries to make sense of it and comes up only with a frown.

“Buck, why did, what—”

Both of Bucky’s hands of Steve tighten, reflexive, eyes wide and honest when he speaks again.

“They were coming at you, and I couldn’t cover you in time,” Bucky says, as self-explanatory, as simple as stating the color of the sky. “Me going down was gonna throw them off just long enough to let someone take the opening.” 

Bucky glances around at the team, and the littering of downed enemies around them, and smiles tight.

“Looks like it worked.”

And Steve wants to rail, wants to scream, wants to argue the same tired line about what Bucky’s worth, and how contrary to some jerk’s opinion, what Bucky is worth is ineffably _more_ than Steve could ever be, but Bucky is living, breathing, and real against him, and fuck if Steve can do anything but be grateful in that moment.

The argument’s long-lived. It’ll certainly keep.

“Do not,” Steve grinds out, throat still tight; “do _not_ do that again, James Barnes.”

Bucky shakes his head slow, watches Steve with knowing eyes.

“You know better than to ask me for things I can’t give you, Stevie.”

And Steve sighs, and falls a little into Bucky's touch, his hold, because he knows those words well, by now. Some things, even between them, can’t be asked. Some promises have to stay unkept.

It breaks Steve’s heart every time, to think on it. So he tries not to if he can help it. 

“Though I gotta say,” Bucky says, and the tone in his voice is long-practiced, well-honed: it’s meant to turn the tide in Steve’s blood, to diffuse the rage and the wrecked sense of _being_ that lingers between them when one of them’s hurt, when loss threatens at any turn. “That whole bring-me-back-from-the-grave display, there?” 

“Don’t call it that, it’s not fucking funny, I—”

“Kinda makes me want to ravish you here on the spot, y’know?”

Steve maybe swallows his tongue a little, at that.

Bucky's hands move to Steve’s biceps; Steve’s hand stays on Bucky’s chest, feels the moment his pulse picks up just a little, in tandem with the darkening of his eyes. 

“All that need in you, all that strength,” Bucky squeezes the muscles beneath his palms; Steve shivers in reply. “All that _love_ , it could stop a guy’s heart.” 

And it’d be too close to home, if Steve’s hand couldn’t chart proof of the contrary, if Bucky didn’t lean in to brush his lips against Steve’s, to speak straight into his mouth: 

“And then start it up all over again.”

And Steve’s own pulse jumps a little, and then he’s on his feet, hand grasping for Bucky’s and holding tight.

“Get up,” he says, pulling Bucky’s willing frame hard enough that he crashes straight into Steve’s body, pressed flush and warm and true.

“Get a _room_ ,” Clint whines, and Steve surprises himself with the chuckle that bubble forth after the whirlwind of emotions in the past minutes, moments—but Bucky.

Bucky just grins, wide and real and full this time, and curls an arm tight around Steve’s middle.

“How’s about _both_?” And his wink is lascivious enough to make it clear to everyone watching that he means a different kind of “up”. And Steve?

Steve’s more than good with that.


	4. Cicatrix

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And it tastes of sweat, and blood, and want, and them, and of all those tastes it’s them, it’s _Bucky_ that wins out, the sweet savor of him, and yes. Yes.
> 
>  _That_ is worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life made me forget to update. Life is sometimes dumb like that.

Steve’s gonna bite his split lip all the deeper, gonna swallow more of his own blood before he owns it, but he’s in pain.

Good _god_ , he is in _pain_.

“Feelin’ it?”

Steve glares upward, and fuck, that hurts too, pulls the gash in his eyebrow; Bucky’s leaning casually against the doorframe, holding bandages and alcohol, sizing Steve up in that way he does every time, every goddamn time. And some of those times, Steve misses the fact that the heart in Bucky’s throat, just below that unimpressed expression, pounds for fear, real fear, and Bucky shouldn’t look that way.

Steve doesn’t miss it, this time. And Bucky’s heart shouldn’t be in his throat on Steve’s behalf; Steve’s own heart drops at the notion, every time.

Bucky takes his time swaggering toward where Steve sits on the table top, pressing his thighs against Steve’s knees as he heaves a deep sigh that Steve tries his damnedest not to shiver for the ripple of, and yet.

And yet, he can’t manage. He can’t not be _moved_ by Bucky, just… _being_.

But fuck if it doesn’t strain against the places on his body where bruises have already blossomed dark. Which is basically most of his body.

“Shirt off.” Bucky’s voice is sharp, almost. Clinical, at least.

Steve starts to lift his arms, but fuck if he can, fuck if he’s able to move half as much as he needs to—

“Easy,” Bucky’s voice softens as he reaches, as he takes Steve’s shirt in his hands and maneuvers it off his body in practiced motions that Steve doesn’t understand the mechanics of, but hell if he isn’t grateful for it. To have it.

To have _him_.

Bucky puts his supplies to the side and braces his hands on Steve’s torso, familiar in the pattern to press ever-so-slightly against to check for damage beneath the skin: Steve flinches, moans, but doesn’t cry out. Bucky’s eyes never leave his, and Steve resists the urge to get lost in them, because Bucky’s pissed at him, clearly, and Steve’s a little pissed that Bucky’s pissed because Bucky knows Steve couldn’t stand by, Steve _couldn’t_ —

“It looks worse than it is,” Steve grumbles, and regrets it immediately, iron blossoming on his tongue from his lip again—and he can taste it, too, just then. The iron, bitter metal: Bucky’d only brought liver home for meals this past week, the bastard, and he _knew_ Steve was too engrossed in his new art project, the sign Mrs. Montagne had commissioned from him, too distracted to go down and find something edible; too aware of their finances to have wasted even fucking _liver_ , but good god _damn_.

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Bucky’s eyes don’t waver don’t give a damn thing away, but it’s true: Steve’s in pain, a lot of it, but it’s just the same ol’ shit. Nothing new. Nothing he can’t handle. All red and bruise and blood and flash, but nothing irredeemable. 

Steve’s a little lost in his own head when he feels it: light, gentle as a whisper but warm like cocoa and a heart if you could hold it in your hands and keep it safe—lips against the worst of it first, already darkening at his side, stark against the cut of his ribs but Bucky’s mouth barely lets him feel the pain.

“What are you doing?” Steve asks, just a little breathless for the surprise of it; for the sensation of it. For both.

“What’s it look like?” Bucky tosses him a look that speaks to his obliviousness. It’s a familiar sort of look. “‘M kissing it better, dummy.”

“Seriously?” Steve tries to make it sound incredulous, like he can’t believe Bucky’s doing it, can’t believe he’s being so juvenile or...whatever idea it is that kissing hurts better falls under. 

He fails miserably. As well he should, he figures.

Because Steve loves being kissed better by his Bucky. 

Bucky’s lips cross every cut, every scratch, every burst cluster of capillaries like he could caress them with his mouth, with his tongue: presses harder, more passionate, more protective over scars drawn silver with time and then soft again, so impossibly soft: Steve can’t hold back the little whimper, the little moan that makes Bucky stop, that lets Steve know his eyes had drifted closed because they snap back open to catch Bucky’s horrified look that he’s hurt Steve, caused him pain, but then Steve leans, grabs him on instinct and absolute need and steels against the way he knows the impact will burn like a bitch when he crashes their lips together, but it’s worth it.

And it tastes of sweat, and blood, and want, and them, and of all those tastes it’s them, it’s _Bucky_ that wins out, the sweet savor of him, and yes. Yes.

 _That_ is worth it.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Bucky wakes up from a light doze—and he can do that, now, just drift off without the residual nag of fear ramping his pulse up, seizing his lungs and making real rest elusive, and maybe it’s something to do with the warm body wrapped around him at any given moment of rest, or maybe it’s time and comfort and the promise of tomorrows that he can feel, that he can remember, that he can look forward to; whatever it is, Bucky wakes to lips on his bare torso: featherlight and enough that he wouldn’t have noticed, probably, wouldn’t have stirred if not for the way they linger now at the sensitive space between two ribs that healed too fast, but healed just off enough that he notices the pressure of the scar tissue differently.

And Steve—obvious owner of said lips—damn well knows that. 

“Having fun?” Bucky rasps a little, voice sleep-dry but soft at the edges as he reaches to run a hand through Steve’s butter-soft hair.

Steve, of course, doesn’t answer: just keeps kissing, nipping, breathing up lines on Bucky’s body that he traces every so often: unnatural, silvered, bigger and smaller and proof of things unnamable because a supersoldier heals quick, and full, and marks like these, well.

They speak to the unspeakable.

And every once in awhile, Steve seems compelled to lavish them with attention, to take them specifically and show them the kind of love he only shows Bucky, and Bucky’s not stupid. Bucky knows what Steve’s doing.

He’s reminding Bucky that the scars are part of him, and that he is loved: every inch.

And it’s taken a long while, but some days: some moments, some lilting brush of those lips above another—sometimes, he finds himself almost convinced.

Convinced or not, though, Bucky shivers when just the tip of Steve’s tongue swirls around a knife wound that his handlers had induced an infection in, just to teach him a lesson before putting him on ice. Steve kisses the raised flesh delicately, as if it still caused physical pain, and Bucky takes to stroking Steve’s hair, to cupping the back of his head and cradling him close, because that’s all he has, just now. That’s all he can do—press Steve into his own warmth, let the beat of his heart speak its volumes to Steve’s ear, for him alone—and so he does that, while Steve only moves enough from that hold to continue his ministrations, his mission.

Cover every inch.

And good god, but Bucky loves him.


	5. Recitation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Read to me.”
> 
> Bucky smiles outside of Steve’s line of sight, curled as he is into Steve’s chest, chin tilted down to devour the pages of his book at a speed he’d never appreciated before, in his serum enhanced state—he’s always been an avid reader, devoured whatever kind of knowledge he could find, and part of it was natural curiosity, but he’s not so proud as to pretend it wasn’t in part because he hoped one day, he’d learn something that would make Steve’s body stop failing him, stop betraying all that was _Steve_.
> 
> Anyway: he can read faster, now, thanks to his knock-off serum, and he kinda likes it, honestly.
> 
> He has so much to catch up on.
> 
> Which is why he scoffs at Steve, and lets the rumble of Steve’s voice beneath him, deep as the beat of that perfect heart below the ribs—
> 
> “You already know all this shit.”

Steve’s not stupid, by any means. But hell if he holds a candle to James Barnes.

Because, Bucky, jerk that he is, had been top of their class in near-on every subject since they were just kids, and when Steve was sick he didn’t just collect Steve’s work and deliver it, he taught the damn lesson to Steve like he got paid for the job. And now, now: here, it’s just the two of them, and Bucky’s taken a day off because Steve’s not doing so well, and it’s too early in the season for that, they both know it, and if his cough and the shivers and the sniffling isn’t headed-off here and now, it’s gonna be a long fucking winter.

Maybe their _last_ fucking winter.

But Bucky’s got the day, and the soup’s simmering in the kitchen, nearly done, and Steve’s wrapped in every threadbare blanket they own, and all put together it almost serves as a single thick quilt, and then he’s wrapped in Bucky’s arms and held tight against his chest, cocooned in Bucky’s body heat and that’s better, more safe and close and right than anything else, and Steve never thought he’d feel that, never dreamt he’d allow anyone to take care of him, and he doesn’t always, it not without a fight every time, or even most times, but this: like this.

This is perfect.

Bucky’s holding him in that way that fits innately, like their shapes were carved at the same time to fit just so, and Bucky’s breathing deep, left arm curled around Steve tight where his right rests more idly, sheltering Steve from the draft at the window, beneath the door while he balances his book on the theory of relativity just at the cut of Steve’s ribs, reading aloud because Steve asked him to: because Steve’s pulse is quick for the battle in his own body, for the tremors down his spine, and he knows that the position of their bodies isn’t mere convenience, or coincidence: it’s proven fact over years of this, of them, that to hear Bucky’s voice through his chest is a balm; to chart Bucky’s heartbeat at its source is a song, a maestro conducting and begging Steve’s to move in time.

“You okay there, punk?”

It’s not until the steady cadence of words stops, and the question breaks through that Steve realizes he’d been burrowing close into Bucky’s heat with every line he read, fidgeting but only to get closer, to feel nearer, to hear every rumble and inhale and lifeblood-beat like a lullaby, a siren song. 

There was a time when he’d feel ashamed for the need. There are still times, now and again: but here, now.

He tilts his neck back and looks at Bucky through his lashes and smiles soft before he settles back down, nestles back in and pats Bucky’s right forearm on the way down, encouraging him to keep reading as he murmurs, soft and content:

“Mmm. M’good.”

And Steve knows, as Bucky picks back up with the reading of things Steve couldn’t care less about in themselves, and yet he could never care more about _Bucky_ so it’s beautiful, it’s soothing, and yeah. Steve knows, then, as his own heart starts to reach out closer to mimic Buck’s pulse, that it’s gonna be an okay winter, after all.

They’ll both see spring when it comes.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“Read to me.”

Bucky smiles outside of Steve’s line of sight, curled as he is into Steve’s chest, chin tilted down to devour the pages of his book at a speed he’d never appreciated before, in his serum enhanced state—he’s always been an avid reader, devoured whatever kind of knowledge he could find, and part of it was natural curiosity, but he’s not so proud as to pretend it wasn’t in part because he hoped one day, he’d learn something that would make Steve’s body stop failing him, stop betraying all that was _Steve_.

Anyway: he can read faster, now, thanks to his knock-off serum, and he kinda likes it, honestly.

He has so much to catch up on.

Which is why he scoffs at Steve, and lets the rumble of Steve’s voice beneath him, deep as the beat of that perfect heart below the ribs—

“You already know all this shit.”

“Not all of it,” Steve says softly, a hum under Bucky’s cheek, like the brush of knuckles as Steve combs fingertips through his hair.

“I’ve been,” and Steve’s voice goes distant, faraway like Bucky hates but understands; understands deep in his bones: “distracted.”

And Bucky knows what that means. Bucky knows Steve struggled, still struggles to find where he fits, if he fits: Bucky knows that too much of both of them is tied up in the other and it nearly killed Steve for it, and Bucky’ll never quite forgive himself for that fact, but here, now, together like this: he would give every breath left in his body in exchange for this.

Forever.

“Can I…” Steve starts, voice hesitant and it shouldn’t be. Bucky can’t deny him a damn thing, and what’s more: he’d never want to. 

“I mean, would you mind, could I maybe—”

“Anything, you idiot,” Bucky leans up to nose under Steve’s chin, just a hint of stubble there at the end of the day. “So just spit it out.”

Bucky grins a little as he feels the flush spread warm down Steve’s throat, toward his chest: he always blushed so damn pretty, and it never failed to make Bucky’s knees a little bit weak, his pulse a little bit wild.

“Could we,” and Bucky hums softly when he feels Steve swallow hard; “switch?”

Bucky looks up, brown quirked; he’s not sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t that.

“Sure, I guess.”

“If it’s,” Steve starts, fumbles, and that’s another thing Bucky savors, like this: something that only he gets, something that Steve only lets his guard down enough for _him_ to see. “If you don’t want—”

“Naw, that’s not it,” Bucky assures him as he turns, raises up to bracket Steve between his thighs, never breaking eye contact as he kisses Steve’s chest. “I just,” and he shakes his head, lets his hair fall in a curtain and tickle Steve through the thin shirt covering his skin. 

“I like feeling you breathing,” Bucky says, quiet and precious because that’s what this is. “I like that it’s clear, easy. That this is so,” and he leans his cheek down one more time, just against the beat of Steve’s heart:

“So strong. Steady.”

And that strong and steady beat hitches just a bit, speeds just a little, and Bucky grins, kisses Steve’s pec before leaning up on his elbows and looking Steve head-on.

“It’s a reminder, you know,” Bucky says, with only the old echoes of regret left in it. “Where we are. What’s past, and what’s now. What’s real and what isn’t.”

Steve frowns, reaches to ease Bucky back down on top of him. “Buck—”

“Shut it, punk,” Bucky smirks, quickly using the leverage of his legs in a practiced, butter-smooth flip so that Steve’s settled against him in the blink of an eye. Steve doesn’t even bother to protest, just nuzzles into Bucky’s body, and that tells Bucky all he needs to know.

He snakes arms around Steve’s torso, one palm settled against his sternum, just for the certainty of it all. 

“Just let me hold you, yeah?”

And the smile, the relief in Steve’s voice? 

“You always have.”

It’s worth the world.

Bucky moves around a bit, tries his best not to shuffle Steve in the process. He keeps a hold on Steve’s body as he angles his wrist just right against Steve’s side to balance his book, and it’s when he’s perfectly settled and ready to start reading again: that’s when he notices.

Steve’s absolutely fucking boneless against him, in a way that he’s only ever seen after Steve’s come at least four times at a go; maybe five. But where those moments are sweaty and gasping and beautiful and paced by the racing blood in their veins, this.

The hand on Steve’s chest measures a calm, lazy beat that’s not even that slow, that's satisfied and sure in Steve’s _sleep_.

“If I’da known you’d go all soft and boneless for this,” Bucky murmurs, kissing the top of Steve’s head; “we’d have done it ages ago.”

Steve’s quiet at that, presses close to Bucky’s body in a way that Bucky’s body’s always known: hiding a little. Basking a little. Afraid and fearless. Perfect.

“I,” Steve starts; “I just....”

“Stevie.” And Bucky doesn’t make him look, doesn’t turn his face with his hand: just breathes against the crown of Steve’s head and moves lips against his hair: intimate. “You’ve been taking such good care of me—” 

“Nothing like what you did for me, Buck,” Steve protests immediately, all fire and certainty and fuck, Bucky loves the hell out of his punk, his saving grace, his whole world. “Not even close—”

“I ain’t finished.”

Steve, surprisingly, shuts up. Bucky lets the hand on Steve’s chest stroke up and down, and Steve softens all the more under that rhythmic touch.

“You been takin’ care of me,” Bucky breathes, straight from the soul. “But you gotta let me take care of you too, babydoll, Yeah?”

“Buck—”

“The answer you’re looking for is ‘Yes, Bucky’.”

Steve huffs, a laugh and a snort and indignation in a way that’s only ever been Steve, and Bucky will go to his grave with that as one of many treasured fragments that make up Steve Rogers, but he won’t have it now. Not about this.

“Steve, you’ve been denying yourself this for how many years, now? How many _years_?”

Steve pauses, but Bucky can feel the pout of his lips against his chest, telltale and unmistakable. 

“Not _denying_ , just,” Steve looks for the right words to downplay it, because that’s what Steve fucking does. 

“Just lost it,” Steve finally says, barely a whisper, and it doesn’t downplay anything. It sticks in Bucky's chest just a little, for how much it’s the honest-to-god truth: “and knew I wasn’t ever gonna find it again.”

Bucky swallows, breathes, and holds Steve impossibly closer.

 

“But you did,” Bucky exhales, soft but more sure than any other thing; “we did, now.”

Steve hums a bit, and presses his own lips to Bucky chest as he nods, echoes: “We did.”

“And now it’s time you let go,” Bucky tells him, firm but overflowing with feeling enough to envelope them both; “and trust that I’ll be here to catch you, every goddamn time. Understand?”

“Yeah,” Steve breathes into Bucky, right up against the heart he holds and owns and always has: “yeah, Bucky.”

He glances up, and those eyes are so fucking beautiful when they gleam this way, when the sheen on the surface is like crystal and is only there for the sake of love.

“I understand.”

“Good,” Bucky cups Steve’s cheek for a moment, holds his gaze meaningfully before easing him back down against Bucky’s chest. “Now you just lie back and listen to this riveting treatise on the multicultural evolution of mythology.”

Steve laughs, full and free as Bucky opens the book again to the place he left off. “God, you’re a fuckin’ nerd.”

Bucky nips the top of Steve’s ear.

“Don’t pretend you don’t love it.”

And Steve yelps as Bucky laughs, and doesn’t fight the warmth that follows as he feels Steve press his ear closer to listen to the joy start bold in his chest and bubble upward.

And yeah, maybe he wraps his arm around Steve just a little bit tighter, then, but there’s nothing stopping him. 

There’s no reason not to.


	6. Jealousy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Stevie—”
> 
> Steve grimaces at the door slams shut too few minutes after he arrives home—Bucky’d followed him.
> 
> Goddamnit.
> 
> “Don’t, Bucky,” Steve tries to beg him off, tries to let the anger project his need for Bucky to leave him the fuck alone, just now. “I’m not in the mood.”
> 
> Because Steve had left for the privacy, for the space to deal with this, to process this, to make the scene he’d witnessed that was somehow different from all the others, the ones Steve knew were just to save face: this was different. 
> 
> This _hurt_.
> 
> “Steve—”
> 
> “What did I _say_ —”
> 
> “ _Steve_.”
> 
> Bucky’s hand is on his shoulder again, turning him around, and Steve’s too stunned by it in the moment to pull away fast enough. 
> 
> “ _Look_ at me.”

Steve’s halfway home by the time Bucky catches up with him.

“Woah there, hold your horses,” Bucky’s hand only rests on his shoulder to exert enough momentum to turn Steve on his heel before he can jump out of Bucky’s reach.

“Don’t.”

Bucky frowns. “Don’t what, Stevie?”

“Don’t call me that,” Steve says, toneless, the image of Bucky’s arms around the dame in the bar, his lips close at her neck but not touching, the way she laughed and he grinned, just, just—

“Don’t _touch_ me like, like...”

“Like what?”

Steve’s eyes narrow. “Like you _mean_ it.”

Bucky’s face falls, sinks from confusion to something too close to hurt, too close because he doesn’t deserve hurt, not now, not like this.

“Steve—”

“Go,” Steve swallows; “Just,” and he screws his eyes shut and waves his hand before turning to be on his way. 

“Just go, Buck,” Steve says softly, a little dangerously, before he comes apart right here, one way or another. “She’ll be missin’ ya.”

And he walks quicker than his lungs like in the cool, and maybe he turns his deaf ear toward the way Bucky calls after him because Steve’s not always as strong as he wants to be.

 _Needs_ to be. 

\------------

“Stevie—”

Steve grimaces at the door slams shut too few minutes after he arrives home—Bucky’d followed him.

Goddamnit.

“Don’t, Bucky,” Steve tries to beg him off, tries to let the anger project his need for Bucky to leave him the fuck alone, just now. “I’m not in the mood.”

Because Steve had left for the privacy, for the space to deal with this, to process this, to make the scene he’d witnessed that was somehow different from all the others, the ones Steve knew were just to save face: this was different. 

This _hurt_.

“Steve—”

“What did I _say_ —”

“ _Steve_.”

Bucky’s hand is on his shoulder again, turning him around, and Steve’s too stunned by it in the moment to pull away fast enough. 

“ _Look_ at me.”

And Steve does, because with Bucky he’s weak. And he sees contrition, maybe. Real feeling, though: definitely. 

“Buck, come on,” Steve sighs, deflating a little, though still simmering beneath the surface. “Don’t try and sidestep it, alright? This wasn’t what it normally was, I know it, this was—”

“You don’t know _shit_.”

Bucky snarls it out like there’s poison in it, and he’s trying to spit it clean, and Steve blinks in the face of it, because it doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t add up right.

But Bucky’d been close with her, bought her too many drinks, danced with her alone too many times in a row and put a hand on her thigh just so and it was more than they played at, more than they pushed the limits for the girls’ sake, more than innocence and necessity, it was, it looked like—

“You only know what you’ve been pickin’ to listen to,” Bucky cuts his train of thought with another low rush of words: “Not what I’ve actually been sayin’.”

“I don’t have to _hear_ it, Buck,” Steve says, rubbing a palm across his face because he’s tired, now. He’s just _tired_. “Just have to watch it. And I got the message loud and clear, just fine.”

“You’re a stubborn sonofabitch.”

“You’re insulting _me_ ,” and suddenly, Steve remembers what was making him so tired all over again: anger. Heartbreak, betrayal, and good old fucking _rage_. “When you just made me watch you make time with that dame like—”

“Like _what_ , Steve?” Bucky pushes, open hands on Steve’s chest with enough force for Steve to stumble back, a challenge Bucky knows him too well to think he’d back down from, turn away from, would rise up like a flame to meet. “Like it was _half_ of what it is when I’m with you?”

Steve’s eyes narrow, even as his heart trips particularly hard around how Bucky speaks it, how he says it like a _fact_.

“You don’t get to fucking talk to me like that, you don’t get to make this out to be, to be…” Steve shakes his head, grits his teeth:

“You don’t _get_ to.”

Bucky steps back, doesn’t meet Steve’s eyes as he breathes out, gaze somewhere near Steve’s neck where Steve can feel his pulse racing, giving him away. 

“I love you with everything I fucking am, Steve Rogers.” And Bucky looks drawn, hunched in on himself all of a sudden even as he stands tall, chest open, arms spread just a little like he’s waiting for a shot to the heart, ready. Willing.

“Love you selfish. Needy. Head to your toes,” Bucky murmurs, hoarse all of a sudden, like it’s big in him, like it’s stuck in his throat.

“And how long have I held onto you, huh? How many times have I pressed lips against you and told you, over and over again,” and Bucky’s closer, now, suddenly; Bucky’s close enough to taste the whiskey on the heat of his breath, to feel the almost-touch of his chest where it heaves, to hear the lick of his jaw as it sets, as he spits out:

“You deserve _better_.”

And maybe, maybe—

Maybe Steve hadn’t been listening. Maybe Steve had been tuning out bullshit when he heard it whispered stupid as anything in their bed, beneath their sheets.

Fuck if he’s stopping here, though. No, sir.

“Yeah,” Steve steps into Bucky’s space, now, and Steve takes a perverse, glittering satisfaction in a way that tingles straight up and down his spine, electric when Bucky steps back from Steve’s advance, eyes blown wide and Steve takes a grim sort of joy in that, no matter why those pupils splay black. “Yeah, I deserve better than my fella fucking _lying_ to me, or him tossing me aside like I’m nothing’. I do deserve better than that.”

Bucky’s eyes close and he breathes out slow in that way he always does before the cascade of his fury starts to seep through the cracks.

“God _damnit_ , Steve,” Bucky snarls, but there’s still that impossible gild of sorrow, of defeat even in his fury. “You don’t _get_ it, you’ve never fucking _got_ it.”

“What? What did I miss this time, oh brilliant James Buchanan Barnes?” Steve explodes a bit, then, loses the loose grip on his emotions that was left to rein him in. “What did stupid, tiny, pathetic Steve Rogers—”

And that’s what tips it. That’s what unleashes Bucky’s imminent rage with a scowl and a heavy push that turns to a grasp around Steve’s arms like he’s the last foothold to this world as Bucky sinks, as Bucky falls.

“You don’t talk like that,” Bucky damn well growls at him, and Steve can’t help himself. He shivers for it. “You don’t _lie_ like that, you understand me?”

Steve juts his chin out, holds firm, but he knows Bucky feels the tremor that tone sent through him; or else, he would, if Bucky doesn’t seem to be trembling ever harder.

“ _That_ is what you don’t get,” Bucky hisses, low and firm and fierce but with eyes bleeding something soul-deep that Steve is starting to fear might undo him if it keeps seeping out, and if that happens, it’ll damn well undo Steve in kind.

“You’re not a single one of those things. You’re brilliant,” Bucky says, vows to the heavens with something like absolute truth, maybe the only thing that Bucky’s ever held with unwavering faith. “You’re strong and you’re sure and you think quick and don’t hesitate and you know, you just _know_ what’s right,” and Bucky takes in a breath that shakes, that sounds choked like Steve’s does on bad nights, cold nights spent in Bucky’s arms and Steve’s chest hurts to hear it even like this, Steve’s chest hurts as he remembers so many nights, steadfast and unwavering, and he wonders why he never remembers those things before the shit hits the fan between them, like this. ‘Cause he never does. 

Not once. 

“And you’re brilliant like shining, too,” Bucky adds on, looking up now, not at Steve but at the ceiling, toward the sky. “Like burning, like I shouldn’t be able to touch you, to feel you, to keep you, like I can’t, like I…”

And Bucky trails off on a far end of a sob, and Steve wants to touch, Steve wants to hold and keep because he’s starting to see it, the reasons in Bucky’s head. The fucking useless, dumbass, absolutely unfounded reasons but the ones that Steve can read that break his broken heart more than any flaw of biology, any failing of modern science could slap on his name and call him less for it. 

This is _so_ much _worse_.

“And you’re huge, you take up all the space, in here,” Bucky’s hand goes to his chest, massages too rough, and Steve just wants to take that hand in his own and kiss the fingers, end this now but he can’t, he can’t even fucking move. “You’re taller and steadier than a mountain for all the heart in you, the heart that matters _more_ , and when you look in your eyes, when you see it it’s the most perfect thing, you know? It’s the most, it just,” Bucky gasps, pants for air when he pauses, when he finally looks Steve in the eyes, stares and speaks straight into him, pure as anything in the world:

“Takes your breath away, s’what it does.”

And it takes Steve’s breath away, too, just to hear it said, let alone believed by the most important man in the entire world. 

“And _pathetic_? Hell,” Bucky laughs, a hollow sound that settles heavy in Steve’s gut. “Hell, if you’re pathetic…”

Bucky wipes his hands over his face and fuck, but those eyes are too bright when Steve can see them once again. 

_Fuck_.

“Steve, if you’re pathetic then I’m lower than the dirt. But you’re not, not even close, not even in the same, the same,” Bucky’s voice cracks, and he shakes his head, staring down at his turned-up palms, callus-dotted and strong and Steve just wants them, wants _him_.

“You’re not,” Bucky says again on a sigh. “But me? I’m still lower than dirt. Worse, even.”

And Steve means to protest, means to reach and grab Bucky, shake him for the lies coming out of _his_ mouth, now, real ones that Steve won’t stand for, but then Bucky’s gaze snaps back to Steve’s and roots him in place.

“I ache sometimes,” Bucky whispers. “I hurt all over just to not, just to,” and Steve watches as Bucky makes fists that turn his knuckles white, then almost blue. “To not touch you. To not just pull you close and take all of you and somehow soak in some of your goodness, some of how _much_ you _are_ —”

And Bucky’s voice is thin, ready to snap, and that’s what seals it.

Steve’s had enough, now. More than.

So he darts in before Bucky can stop him, can see him or fight him and he frames Bucky’s face with his hands and he looks Bucky straight in the eye because he listened. He’s heard now.

And there are amends to be made. Open wounds that have been festering too long that Steve’d been willfully blind to, and god, but he won’t be, he swears to _god_ that if Bucky’ll let him, he’ll never miss the signs again. 

“I don’t want better,” Steve speaks close enough that his lips drag against Bucky’s with every word. “There is no better, there is nothing _better_ but if there was, if you think that there ever could be, I don’t want it.” 

Bucky’s eyes go impossibly wider, and Steve breaks a little more when a single tear drops down for the stretch.

“I don’t want _better_ ,” Steve breathes, moving his mouth to kiss the tear before it makes it all the way down Bucky’s cheek. “I want _you_.”

And Bucky’s breath catches, wet and so, so fucking _sad_ , and Steve pulls Bucky into his chest and let’s him shake a little, soundless for it, as Steve strokes his hair and lets himself feel his own heart beating up against the crown of Bucky’s head. 

“That’s what _you_ don’t see,” Steve murmurs against him; holds him tighter. “That’s what you don’t get.”

He presses lips against the top of Bucky’s head, against his neck and his brow and he lets his chest splay wide as Bucky’s had, vulnerable as he says it:

“You’re my _world_.”

And Bucky stills, before he grips him, snakes arms around him and pulls Steve to him all the harder, like one body that was never meant to come apart.

“That’s dangerous,” Bucky whispers low. “S’dangerous talk, Stevie.”

And yeah, Steve knows. Don’t make it less true.

“Doncha know me by now?” Steve smiles and presses it into Bucky’s hair, holds him tighter still so maybe he can hear it in Steve’s heart: 

“Self-preservation ain’t really my strong suit.”

 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

In retrospect: Steve probably didn’t quite think this whole thing through.

It’d been easy enough. Natasha had proposed drinks: Steve and Bucky and Sam, if he wanted, and she’d bring Maria and a woman whose name Steve vaguely recalls and therefore is probably one of the countless parade Nat had tried to set him up with.

He thinks it might have been the one with the lip piercing. Maybe.

In any case, Sam’s all for it because his thing for Maria Hill could be flashing in neon and still be more subtle; Bucky gives Nat a small smile after she nags for a good twenty minutes that basically means he’ll go, but probably only if Steve nods in kind, and Bucky’s eyes are on him quick, waiting to see.

So Steve says yes. Even if he knows he won’t be going.

Day of, he begs off from exhaustion and a bit of a stomach ache—the former is true, if the emotional sort counts, and the latter _becomes_ true because lying to Bucky isn’t something he’s ever taken with much grace, and it roils in his gut as Bucky’s eyes flood with concern, so full of emotion now, almost more than they’d ever been before; as he crouches near Steve at the side of the sofa and takes his hand casually, even if it sends sparks through Steve’s entire body as he strokes Steve’s knuckles.

“I can stay,” Bucky says. “I’ll make soup or something.”

And if Steve could feel worse about ducking out, and lying to boot, that’d seal it, no question, but Steve’s gotta do this. Steve’s got to let Bucky go. In more ways than one, maybe, much as it makes his chest feel wrong, wrong, _wrong_.

But hell: he’s gotta _try_.

“No, you go out, enjoy a night on the town,” Steve forces a smile, and Bucky studies him for a good long while, eyes unblinking before he stands, impossibly slow, and then bends at the waist to press lips to Steve’s forehead, and fuck if Steve’s pulse doesn’t kick for it; hell if Steve doesn’t close his eyes and savor like it’s the last time.

 _Fuck_.

Bucky grabs him a blanket, and tucks it in around him even against Steve’s protests, rolling his eyes as Steve reminds him he’s a grown man who doesn’t need Bucky to bring him a glass of soda water to settle his stomach, and he _really_ doesn’t need the bendy straw in it, for god’s sake, but Bucky smirks and shakes his head and bows out, and Steve doesn’t even hear the door close for how softly Bucky eases it shut.

Steve thought he’d be able to breathe easier, once that door was closed behind Bucky.

He thought wrong. 

Because Bucky’s spent the past year working through his shit, and working a fucking miracle with it, too: he smiles, he laughs, he cares, he even fights when they need him, and sometimes just because he can be an extra pair of eyes, another line of defense. He goes to his therapist even when he feels like he doesn’t need to. He finds joy in baking, and Steve finds joy in watching his joy, but when they go to bed at night they sleep in separate beds, and Bucky pauses before they part each evening like he’s trying to figure something out, and while he kisses Steve’s cheek, and sometimes it lingers, he goes to his own room. Every time.

And Steve, well. Steve would live with it until he drew his last, or his aching heart betrayed him, but Bucky.

Bucky deserves better. Bucky deserves _more_.

Because Bucky was tied to him, in the beginning, and largely against Bucky’s choice, if not entirely against his will. His recovery was undertaken under Steve’s watchful eye, which was more a gentle hand and a warm embrace and an endless gratefulness to the universe for _this_ beyond all reckoning: but even as Bucky had regained his footing, even as Bucky had recovered and found himself anew, _shaped_ himself anew, he’d stayed with Steve. 

And Steve? Steve couldn’t claim progress and healing like Bucky could. Steve was still a bit adrift, unmoored, lost between generations and purposes and a gnawing, rotting suspicion that his only defining feature was the fight: against the threat of death, against the weight of poverty, against the bullies and the injustice, for Bucky—against the threat of losing him; war and evil and aliens and brainwashing and his own heart and fuck.

Bottom line: Steve’s pretty fucked up, really. And Bucky’s worked so hard, overcome so much, too much, to be chained to Steve like this.

Bucky deserves _better_.

So Steve goes for a run on the opposite side of town to clear his head before heading back home to pretend to read while his mind reels and not a single word makes it through—he figures even on a early night, Bucky’ll stay out with Sam, he likes Sam, so he’ll stay at least a little while even if he’s worried for Steve—based on a lie, a fucking lie, Steve’s fucked _up_ —or not enjoying the company or the bar or the energy or he’s tired; he’ll stay a little while still, so Steve lets himself lie prone on the sofa where the heavy pounding of his pulse is just a static, endless, hateful thing, versus everywhere in the dark, pressed hard into his ear against his pillow.

Maybe it’s the pounding itself, really, that lets him miss the fact that he’s not alone.

“Feeling better, I take it?”

Steve nearly jumps from his skin as he bolts to his feet to see Bucky leaning up against the hallway wall, arms crossed and eyes narrowed.

“Buck,” Steve stammers out, book limp in his hands as his eyes dart to the clock on the microwave; Bucky’d only been gone an hour, if that.

“It’s funny,” Bucky says idly as he pushes himself from the wall, casual in the way Steve knows, and always has known, means Bucky’s fucking _furious_.

“You’d think by now, Steve, you’d have gotten it through that thick fucking skull of yours that I know what you look like when you’re sick,” Bucky’s eyes bore through him, a history too long for two simple souls from another time to stretch plain in his gaze. “Know what it feels like,” Bucky left hand goes to his own chest, rote like, possibly beyond his own notice, but.

Steve notices. 

“You’d think by now you’d know I see through you when you lie.”

Steve doesn’t know if he flushes, or blanches, or, or—fuck.

Bucky just stares, for a long minute in which Steve cannot breathe, before he sighs, long and low and so very, very tired: 

“What are you trying to do, Steve?”

Steve blinks for a second. Over and again like it’ll make something clearer, conjure up some sense. 

“Buck, I don’t—”

“See, ‘cause this isn’t the first time. It’s your most obvious go at it, I’ll grant you, but it sure as hell ain’t the first time.” Bucky clasps his hands in front of him and stare at them hard enough, like maybe if he wanted to he could set them ablaze. 

“Lillian’s a helluva lady, you know,” Bucky says huffing a hollow laugh as he claps his hands together and straightens; starts to pace. “Reminds me of Carter, a little. Same red lips, though,” and he grins a little as he fluffs at his hair; “blue curls instead. Said she thought it’d be patriotic enough to make you stammer, which she apparently finds hilarious.”

Bucky snorts, but the humor dies quick. 

“Thought _I_ was ready for a lip ring, did ya?”

“ _Bucky_ ,” and Steve is becoming increasingly convinced that’s the only word he can actually say; the only word left when the world comes down.

“If you didn’t want to be together like that, now, you could have fuckin’ _said_ ,” Bucky finally exhales; “I ain’t never known you to be a coward before.”

Steve feels the vertigo, the boundless descent as his heart plummets to his shoes. 

“Buck, that isn’t—”

“Then what _is_ it, Steve?” Bucky’s voice raises, eyes flashing. “You let me kiss your cheek but barely ever your lips. You won’t share my bed, and the only times I shared yours were early days, the, the bad—” and Bucky cuts off, shakes his head before his voice breaks any further.

“You know, you _know_ I get it if that’s what this is,” Bucky says, voice low, tone vehement. “If what I did, what I was, if I’m not what you need anymore. I know I don’t deserve, I mean, I understand if you don’t want—”

“It’s not about what I want, Bucky!”

Steve doesn’t expect it to erupt like that, words he doesn’t mean to let out quite like that, but there they are: Steve, chest heaving; Bucky, eyes wide.

“It’s not about what _I_ want.”

Bucky frowns. “The fuck are you even saying?”

“That you deserve fucking _better_ , Bucky!” Steve yells, pleads with him to fucking _understand_ , to see it so that Steve can leave it, can lick the wounds that have been weeping too long in fucking _peace_. “That _I_ don’t deserve _you_!”

And yet: that, apparently, is the point of no return. That’s the place where Steve rips open at the seams and starts to bleed out unrepentantly. 

“You’ve been here for months, Bucky, _months_ after _years_ of the shit they put you through, wrung out and made, made,” Steve can’t even speak it, can’t even form the words on his tongue.

“And you buy the food and you make sure the apartment’s clean and never miss therapy and you go out with Natasha and you hug Sam and you spar with _Tony_ of all fucking people, Bucky,” because Bucky made peace with Tony which helped Tony made peace with the past, because Bucky was well-fucking-enough adjusted to even _do_ that—

“And then you go to yoga with Bruce and then Pepper comes for fucking tea and you were made for this, you were made to be here in this world and you’re a part of it, you’re a natural, you’re fucking _perfect_ and you took us to the future like you promised, like you _promised_ and then there’s me, who slept for decades none the wiser, sitting here so stupidly damaged that I can’t get through more than a couple of days before looking for a fight and I—”

Steve barely has the the chance to gasp around the sob that was always building but can’t help but to escape just now; he barely has the chance.

Because Bucky’s mouth is against his own, sucking at Steve’s lower lip before slipping his tongue between, wrapping arms around Steve and pulling him close until Steve’s own rattling pulse is a palpable mallet against Bucky’s chest, and god, _god_.

Steve knew he was missing this, knew it was hurting, carving him out alive but the feeling, the taste and the heat and _Bucky_ , good _god_.

Fuck all, but Steve’s always wanted what was beyond him; what he couldn’t in conscience have.

“You’re a fucking idiot.”

Steve’s still breathing hard, still a little dazed, still a little dizzy with the way the tone, the world’s turned upside down in the span of too-fast heartbeats stuttered through the touch of Bucky’s lips.

Which press hard again—possessive, a little, or more accurate: in _promise_ , swearing something unspeakable but known deep in the soul, in the bones—before Steve can recover from the first. 

“We _are_ gonna talk about all that shit you just said, so don’t think you’re just gonna sweep it back under the rug,” Bucky tells him, strokes his cheek and Steve’s desperate, cracked through enough to whimper, to lean into it like the last breath left in the world; “but now?”

Bucky reaches, frames his face and traces thumbprints across Steve’s cheekbones.

“Now, I am taking the only person I’ve ever wanted, to bed,” Bucky leans, and kisses Steve’s collarbone delicately, so soft it runs a shiver down Steve’s spine; “so I can love him for all he’s worth, with all I’ve got, for as long as he’ll let me.”

Steve sighs, and Bucky wraps arms around him and fits them together, perfectly. _Perfectly_.

“So I can fall asleep with him, and wake up next to him,” Bucky breathes against the side of Steve’s neck; “and feel him, listen to him breathe and know he’s there,” and Steve’s eyes flutter closed when Bucky’s teeth drag just a bit, his tongue teases just a touch on Steve’s skin; “know that the only piece of this world I ever fought for, ever died for, ever...”

He pulls back again, not far enough for his heat to bleed away, but far enough to look Steve in the eye, all soul bare and the vulnerability makes Steve feel weak, for the trust, for the naked proof of all he wants laid before him, offered free: more than he deserves.

“The only thing I ever wanted in any life I’ve ever lived,” Bucky breathes, knowing precisely what Steve thinks, what Steve _needs_.

“For now,” Bucky traces fingertips down his jaw, love and pleading in his gaze, his touch and words as he murmurs: “just let me take him to bed.”

And Steve could crumble, could cry, but what he does is let Bucky lead him, as Steve always has, and exhales the world entire around a single word:

“Okay.”


	7. Aesthetic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re beautiful, you know.”
> 
> A smile curls those plush lips, licked wet and red and waiting, brighter than the soft flush on those cheeks, down that neck, toward the hard buds on that bare chest—
> 
> “Shut it.”

“You’re beautiful, you know.”

A smile curls those plush lips, licked wet and red and waiting, brighter than the soft flush on those cheeks, down that neck, toward the hard buds on that bare chest—

“Shut it.”

He leans down and nuzzles under the blush-warm underside of a chin, rough with just a breath of stubble. “I’m serious.”

Bucky quirks a brow, still composed as Steve stares down at his prone frame, as Steve straddles him full-on, as worn ties are looped and barely knotted to the posts near the wall, all but useless but Bucky lets them hold, stares at Steve with eyes near black for the size of his pupils and hell if Steve’s not hard as fuck against Bucky’s thighs like every time, like _every time_ Bucky lets him, _asks_ him for this.

It boggles Steve’s mind, a little; it turns him on like nothing else in the world.

“Flattery will get you a whole lotta nowhere,” Bucky chides, but cants his hips just the slightest bit so that they both moan just this side of aching.

“Bullshit,” Steve tosses back, and grinds down without thinking on it, without planning it: just cause his body knows this body like it knows how to breathe. “Ain’t like you don’t know.”

Bucky rolls his eyes, and spreads his legs just a little further.

“All those dames,” Steve pushes him further; “come _on_.”

And Steve realizes in an instant that they’ve never had this talk; Steve never even _thought_ of having this talk before, but the way Bucky’s expression flickers, the way his eyes shift for the space of a blink, but more than enough for Steve to notice, for his heart to trip over what isn’t said and is screamed so _loud_ in just that widening of eyes, hell.

“Buck.” Steve says it flat, because it’s not like Bucky could have lived this long and not realized he was the most gorgeous thing Steve’s ever seen, that _anyone’s_ ever seen, that broad chest, those firm muscles, calloused fingers with the steadiest grip, sunkissed skin from long hours and harsh heat, those slim hips and strong thighs and bigger heart than the world deserves, eyes like the sky and the sea all together: mesmerizing. God Himself walking the earth, light and color and all the good sweet things the world can hold.

Bucky’s gotta _know_.

“I clean up alright,” Bucky concedes, watching Steve with a steady gaze even as he bites his lips, giving himself away; “but...”

Steve reaches and cups his face, runs the pads of his thumbs over that bit-swollen lip.

“But you said _beautiful_.”

For a second, Steve thinks maybe Bucky’s offended by the term, would have preferred something more suited to a fella, but Bucky’s hard underneath him, and his eyes are so _full_ , and Steve knows him too well.

“I meant it,” he breathes, leans down and nips at Bucky’s lip just so, in just the way that makes Bucky’s hips cant up, makes him moan from the center of his chest.

“Mean it, Stevie,” Bucky growls, begs; “mean it all,” and his lashes are so fucking long, his features so lax and given whole: “ _please_.”

Bucky hooks his thighs about Steve’s hips, wrists still bound above his head only by his own choice, and draws Steve nearer, urges him gently to raise up and sink down onto him smooth, quick, merciless: with all his heart.

“Show me.”

And Steve kisses him, and grips hands tight, now, around Bucky’s forearms, bracing down as he lines himself to the curve of Bucky’s length and guides himself true, tip teasing at his entrance as he holds himself with all the strength his limbs know until they’re both panting, until they’re both nearly driven to their limits before they even start.

“That and more,” Steve promises against Bucky’s lips as he sinks down, as Bucky gasps into his mouth and Steve swears, Steve _swears_ that if a soul has a taste, that it’s sweet, and it’s that sweetness that Bucky gasps into him as soon as Steve slides home.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“Oh, _god_.”

Bucky smirks as best he can with his tongue dragging slow from behind Steve’s balls back to the first hint of his cleft, feeling the clench and tremble of Steve’s entire being from just the single finger crooked inside Steve’s ass, stretching him in rhythmic circles agonizingly slow and just grazing his prostate when Bucky thinks he may just be getting used to it, too complacent, too breathless-but-not-gasping.

Bucky would be remiss, here, if he let _that_ happen.

He slips a second finger in and relishes the catch in Steve’s breath, not just for the pleasure in it but for the echo of the past reversed—that catch meaning beauty rather than danger, and it’s music to Bucky’s ears as he leans against Steve’s back for leverage, listening to the frantic pulse through the skin and bone and letting it set the pace as he works his fingers just enough to ensure there’s room, give enough for when he resumes his position, his mouth at the very swell of Steve’s spread ass as he slides his fingers free with a bereft little whimper before Bucky’s tongue replaces them, ravenous.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Steve rasps, and Bucky works him, suckles at his entrance before thrusting his tongue in with practiced ease and a knowledge, a familiarity with Steve’s body that he’s fucking honored to have learned over so many years, over so much time and trial to take him apart like this, to be _invited_ to splay him wide and vulnerable and still, he knows, sees only love in those eyes the moment he flipped them to look.

Bucky drags his now-free fingers down Steve’s length as he tongue-fucks him with ease from the back, as Steve’s cock twitches and Bucky thumbs the slit for slick—and the sounds his Stevie makes are perfect, god _damn_ , they’re _perfect_.

 _He’s_ perfect, and Bucky’s never known what he did to deserve it, to get to have it, to get it back and call it his to _keep_.

“Buck, c’mon,” Steve moans, and rolls just the slightest bit against Bucky’s mouth, insistent. “You know what I need. _Please_.”

And Bucky does. And it used to be a matter of hesitance, of shame and fear on his own part, but now?

Now, he just likes it when Steve begs a little.

“What, this?” he teases, bringing his left hand up to cup Steve’s balls where they’re pulled up tight, and Steve moans dirty as fuck as Bucky traces the underside of his cock with his left thumb, gives the lightest whisper of a tweak near the head, just enough pressure, the very limit of what he knows Steve can stand.

“Buck, _please_ —”

“Oh,” Bucky feigns surprise, teasing his mental fingers back to press the now-loose pucker of Steve’s hole. 

 

“Oh, you mean _this_.”

And Bucky presses a kiss in anticipation of the way he presses the ribbed metal into Steve’s body, seeing the tremble shiver down Steve’s spine as he eases the touch inward.

“Buck,” Steve pants, “Buck, you know, you _know_.”

And Bucky does. Bucky knows.

“Sure you’re ready?” he whispers, half to tease, half just to be certain.

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve whines, and that’s all the answer Bucky needs.

So Bucky slips a finger from each hand into Steve’s hole, spreading him just that little bit wider, letting the rest of his left hand cup Steve’s ass, just as Steve likes it, likes to feel the smooth metal against his over-sensitive skin: but Bucky spreads him, and breathes against that opening for a moment, just a moment as Steve nearly sobs for it, and that’s all Bucky can do, that’s all Bucky can deny him for—

Bucky leans in, pushes his tongue between his fingers and in, and feasts for it, as Steve comes apart entirely.

 _Perfect_.


	8. Vow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “They sent it to me.”
> 
> Bucky says it, low and soft, and then Steve sees it, polished to shining between Bucky’s fingers.
> 
> “Storage at the Smithsonian,” Bucky chuckles; “like I was ever Smithsonian-worthy, ‘cept as the guy on the wall next to you.”
> 
> Steve nips chidingly at Bucky’s jaw. “Bullshit. Don’t forget your jacket, up on that mannequin, that was all you.”

“Buck?”

Bucky turns, mouth agape with apologies he doesn’t know how to say for what he’s holding, precious in his hands.

“Stevie,” he starts, voice pitched low. “I’m sorry, it fell out and I wanted to catch it before it rolled under anything, it’s too—”

“Buck, what,” Steve starts, but then he sees it; it takes him a while—Bucky’s in the room, packing things away because Steve can’t stay in Sarah’s old room for very long at a stretch, not yet—it takes him a while to come in to see what’s in Bucky’s hand.

Steve’s breath catches.

“She used to tell me the story,” Steve says, voice a strangled whisper, but never reaching for the ring in Bucky’s palm: only staring. “How my dad proposed. How happy they were.”

“Stevie—”

“She said the ring’d be mine. For a dame who saw me for me, who loved me for…”

Steve’s voice breaks, and tears sneak down his cheeks. Bucky’s setting the ring on the bureau in a second, hands on Steve’s face, brushing them away.

“Stevie, baby, I—”

“I wanted that.”

Bucky’s heart cracks a little, to hear that; but it’s a thing he should have known, should have seen. Of course what they have can’t last, ain’t natural, won’t live beyond hushed rooms and closed doors. Bucky’s been foolish, childish to think it could—

“To be loved,” Steve says softly. “Seen, for _me_.”

Bucky brushes his thumbs back and forth across Steve’s cheeks, his jaw, and then Steve’s hands are on his, stilling them against his skin and Bucky meets his eyes, and oh.

 _Oh_.

“We could,” Steve swallows, “we could take it down to Belkin’s, get it sized, I,” Steve gasps on a sob, and Bucky pulls him closer but only so far as Steve lets him. “Mom would have wanted me to give it to the person who I saw, who _I_ loved with,” he breathes out slow, steeling himself the way he does before he takes a blow, throws a punch:

“Who I loved with my whole heart.”

And Bucky doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t think he can breathe, but he kisses Steve for all he’s worth in that moment, and if his own heart stumbles, races, melts for this, for _this_ , and if the glint of that ring on the old worn wood shines bright like a flame in the dark, then it’s fitting.

Because Steve is all the light in his life; all the heart in his chest. Always has been.

Always would be.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Steve comes up behind Bucky and wraps arms around him, perches his chin on Bucky’s shoulder to peer over at what he’s so focused on, held in his hands and Steve doesn’t think twice about it, about coming up unannounced or making enough noise to be noticed in his approach or touching his lover when his lover can’t see it come: he doesn’t think about it. 

He doesn’t have to anymore. And isn’t that fucking _something_.

“They sent it to me.”

Bucky says it, low and soft, and then Steve sees it, polished to shining between Bucky’s fingers.

“Storage at the Smithsonian,” Bucky chuckles; “like I was ever Smithsonian-worthy, ‘cept as the guy on the wall next to you.”

Steve nips chidingly at Bucky’s jaw. “Bullshit. Don’t forget your jacket, up on that mannequin, that was all you,” Steve teases, hands lacing together at Bucky’s waist. Bucky snorts, but then focuses again on the ring in his hand. 

“Remember when I got it?” Bucky smiles, and Steve does remember. It’d been a graduation present; Bucky’d brought it over first thing to show him, proud as anything: his grandfather’s wedding band, entrusted to _him_. “We joked—”

“I wasn’t joking.”

It’s quiet that follows Steve’s words, Steve’s immediate response because it’s the truth. The only truth.

Bucky’s breath is all he can hear above what’s becoming the heavy pound of his pulse—Bucky’s breath is all that overcomes that noise because it’s one of the only things that matters more than Steve’s own heart, Steve’s own life.

“Woulda worn it on my thumb with string wrapped ‘round and wouldn’t have complained once,” Steve murmurs, reaching to touch the ring and remembering how he’d looked at it longingly and wondered just how much yarn would be needed to make sure it stuck, make sure it never slipped away. None of it; nothing it stood for. Nothing it was or could be.

 _Would_ be. For _always_

“Well,” Bucky exhales, and turns properly to look at Steve straight on, eyes on him without wavering, without blinking as he grasped for Steve’s left hand, raises it first to his lips to kiss each fingertip, to kiss long at the pulsepoint of Steve’s wrist before he presses their palms together loose: watches Steve’s face as he presses the ring to Steve’s finger, just at the tip of his nail.

And then he looks, takes in the view of his ring hovering at Steve’s finger, and Steve’s gaze follows. Bucky lifts Steve’s hand again and kisses where the metal would rest, presses lips long and full of so much love Steve thinks he could dissolve in it—might let himself. Might do it willingly. 

Already has, really, if he’s being honest. 

“No string required,” Bucky whispers, a little choked with the emotion Steve can’t swallow, just yet. He takes a moment to admire the impossible reality of this moment: unexpected; overdue.

Steve kisses him hard, and slides his hand forward so the ring goes on, slides all the way down.

Bucky stares at it, open mouthed, before he looks at Steve with wide eyes.

“Ain’t I supposed to ask you a question?”

Steve smiles, soft: perfectly content, for the first time in so very, _very_ long.

“Ain’t we both had the answer long enough, by now?”

Bucky breathes, and cups Steve’s cheeks as he draws him close and breathes out against Steve’s lips:

“Yeah.”

And Bucky’s eyes are so bright when he looks up, when his own lips curl in joy:

“Yeah, we have.”


	9. Unwavering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Never cared about this,” Bucky murmurs into Steve’s skin, before he presses lips to Steve’s chest.
> 
> “Only cared that it kept _this_ ,” and Steve’s heart under Bucky’s mouth jumps as Bucky just breathes there, against him, and Steve doesn’t know what to say, except the obvious.
> 
> “I love you, Buck.”

He wakes up in the middle of the night, in a cold sweat, hands reaching first for a body that’s not beside him, before they run down his own heaving chest as he screws his eyes closed, because in his dream, there was Bucky, right beside him, and—

And in his dream, their bodies fit together like they always had.

Like Steve’s terrified they won’t, anymore. Like Steve’s terrified that _that’s_ not the only thing about them that won’t fit, when he finds Bucky again. When he has the chance to hold him, to taste him, to—

Steve steadies his breathing, not noticing how thin and short it’d become because it burned, that’s all, and he was so used to it burning when he took a breath that it wasn’t anything new.

He runs his palms over his face and wonders, for a second, if he’ll ever get used to a body that doesn’t _hurt_ as the norm.

He knows he won’t sleep any more tonight, so he goes to the desk in the corner and looks at the crumpled attempts to _explain_ any of this, wasted paper he feels guilty about even if he doesn’t have to now, even if the Army is footing the bill—but maybe it’s not the waste that brings the guilt.

Really: he _knows_ that’s not where the guilt comes from.

He grabs another piece of paper and, for lack of anything else to do in the dark, anything else that matters more than this: he tries again.

 _Dear Bucky,_ Steve sighs, his heart shivers: god, he misses Bucky. Fuck, he’s terrified that if he manages to write any one of these letters through to the end, that it won’t find anyone on the other side, that he’s too late, that—

_Dear Bucky._

_I hope it’s not too cold out there. I know you spent winters worrying over me, but don’t think I didn’t notice how you scowled at the snow all the time, either way._

_Hope it’s dry, too. You left most of your socks here, y’know. So—_

Fuck. Fuck, Steve can’t do this, he can’t—

He crumbles the paper and tosses it aside.

 _Dear Buck, I_ —

Steve sighs, knocks his head back against the chair he’s in. What the hell is he even trying to do? Tell his fella that he didn’t listen, that he was stupid but his stupid made his heart beat right and his body work well, better than, and even so he’s scared as hell that the things Bucky loved about him are all different, are all gone even though he’s still him, he’s still _Steve_ and he still loves Bucky with all of him, every inch and maybe that means, because there’s more of him, of his body if not of his soul, then maybe loving Bucky with his everything is bigger, too, and maybe the fact that he still loves Bucky, that no serum or procedure could ever touch _that_ : maybe that means that none of it’s gone, none of what matters, none of what they are, what they _mean_...

 _Buck_ , Steve writes, heart in his throat; _Buck, I’ve gotta—_

“Captain Rogers?”

The voice comes from the other side of his door, and he looks around him, noticing the peek of the sun through the windows. Shit.

He folds the paper carefully this time, slides it into his left inside jacket pocket as he shrugs it on, and makes to start his day.

\------------

Bucky finds the letter months later, half scribbled thoughts and confessions smeared with dirt from trenches, crinkled from too many days as a dancing monkey. Bucky brings it to their bed and kisses the still-new breadth of Steve’s chest until those impossible lashes flutter.

“Hmm?” Steve hums as he starts to wake. 

“Never cared about this,” Bucky murmurs into Steve’s skin, before he presses lips to Steve’s chest.

“Only cared that it kept _this_ ,” and Steve’s heart under Bucky’s mouth jumps as Bucky just breathes there, against him, and Steve doesn’t know what to say, except the obvious.

“I love you, Buck.”

And Bucky pulls back, cups his face, and Steve gets it, in that moment, because the look in Bucky’s eyes isn’t different, the fit of his hands hasn’t changed, and the feel of his lips on Steve’s, well.

That’s what it’s always been: the most beautiful thing in all the world.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

When Bucky leaves their bed empty, it’s to find Steve at the table again, staring at the file.

 _Again_.

Bucky sighs and walks to his side, dragging a chair next to Steve to see what he’s dwelling on _now_ , for the fuck-knows-how-many-th time.

When he starts to skim the reports from Steve’s side, leaning in, he sighs all the deeper.

 _Subject:_ , the visible page reads, and Bucky knows this one; knows it because he remembers everything, knows it because Steve revisits it maybe more than anything else.

 _Conditioning Regimen 616 has proven successful across 18 of 20 trials; reanimation to acceptable complicity achieved. Full functionality, however, remains preceded by the same_ —

“Babydoll,” Bucky murmurs, reaching a hand out and feeling the minute tremble of Steve’s own hand under his palm. “Leave it. Ain’t nothing for it now.”

Steve shakes his head, almost imperceptible: he has to finish.

And Bucky knows it, but he still tries to stop it, tries to lessen the blow that he prays, if it has to continue, will at least grow weaker with time. 

_Vocal patterns consistent in content as with reanimation under conditioning regimen 615 and all regimens preceding, though relative length has displayed minor variation._

And none of the technobabble does the damage, really, not anymore. They’re both a little numb to that for sheer necessity: no.

No, what gets Steve every time is the scribble in the margin, the sterile notation of everything that matters:

 _Стиви_.

And all Bucky can do, really, is lay it all out straight and sure:

“You know what they used to do, how they controlled me before the cryo worked well enough to do it,” and yeah, they’ve had that talk—they conditioned him through the most effective torture imaginable, let him think on, remember, believe in Steve and kill to protect him, only to then show him that Steve was dead—Steve’s read those parts. They’ve had that talk. Steve doesn’t pull those pages out very often, not anymore.

Thank god.

But they don’t need to say it again.

“Thing is, Stevie,” and Bucky says the name like he said it all those times, all those years, but so much more than a notation in a margin, so much _more_ than anything else in the world: “thing is, I never forgot, not in here.”

Bucky taps his chest, then wraps an arm around Steve to rest his palm on Steve’s chest, too.

“The only part of me I got to hang on to, buried deep enough to keep, was loving you.”

And there are drops of salty heartbreak falling down Steve’s cheeks, Steve’s chin, his neck, all the way down to fall against Bucky’s knuckles but they breathe like that, just breathe and Bucky doesn’t let go of his Stevie.

He doesn’t let go of his Stevie until Steve flips the file closed and they both stand for bed.


	10. Gratitude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I didn’t think it’d change anything,” Bucky whispers, shivers and curls into Steve all the deeper, all the more desperate; “‘cause I don’t love you more or less for having said it, for having heard it, for us being…”
> 
> And Steve knows, somehow, deep in his bones that Bucky’s not shirking naming what they are for any reason other than it’s not the thing that fits inside words. Whatever they are, it’s bigger’n that. 
> 
> “I didn’t think it’d be worse, now,” Bucky murmurs, voice broken enough to cut Steve through with its pieces; “but Steve, you gotta know.”
> 
> Bucky cups Steve’s cheek as he lifts his head, eyes rimmed in red.
> 
> “Feeling this,” Bucky’s hand flattens, palm flush against the pump of Steve’s heart; “only when it’s flirtin’ with leavin’ me, versus when it’s beatin’ with _having_ me, _Steve_ —”
> 
> His voice breaks and his face crumples, and he buries his face hot and wet in Steve’s neck as he gasps out, raw:
> 
> “It was _worse_.”

It’s early days—this thing between them is still so knew, so fragile and perfect and everything they’ve ever been illuminated in starfire and hot in Steve’s veins just the same: it’s early days, and Steve’s only just getting his sealegs back from a nasty bout with the flu: Bucky’s only been by to deliver Steve’s textbooks and lessons, and Steve was foolish enough to be hurt until his ma explained Bucky’d taken off his shifts at Mr. Reynolds’ store to watch Steve when Sarah had to work, in the days before he’d been back to his right mind after the fever broke, so he owed doubles and even triples to the guys at the shop for taking his shifts while Steve was sick, just to convince the boss to let him keep the job he needed to help his own family.

Steve’s chest’s still sore from the coughing and the all-over ache of illness, but the reality of what Bucky’s done for him, yet again, hurts in a different way entirely. 

He's doing well, though, and he's not so much a fool as to think that’s not largely for the fact of Bucky’s care: his ma had long since taught Bucky how to do what she couldn't if she was caught up at the hospital, or if things were too close for making ends meet to miss a shift: and that was almost always true, even when she did take off to care for Steve. 

Steve sighs, and wishes the one thing he shouldn't wish, the thing he’d feel horrible confessing out loud, the thing that's selfish and ungrateful and would have him begging forgiveness come Sunday. 

He wishes his body would cut him a break, less for his own sake than for the sake of those he loves. He wishes it'd cut him a break, or else cut him loose one of these times, one of these too-close calls, and let him go. 

Steve’s lost in that thought enough that he can't focus on the book Bucky brought for their English class; too lost in that thought to hear the door creak open, and hell, he doesn't even have an excuse: his good ear’s already turned that way. 

It's the intake of breath, sharp and sudden, that gets him, draws him out. 

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky breathes, doesn't take the name in vain but instead hisses an honest prayer: “ _Stevie_.”

Steve stands, and it doesn't make him dizzy, and Bucky looks almost scared to move as Steve walks freely to him, as Steve realises Bucky hasn't _seen_ him up and about yet, only dropped his schoolwork with Ma or Mrs. Fletcher next door. 

“Oh, Buck,” Steve starts, but then Bucky’s on him, Bucky’s hands are everywhere: up and down his arms—no longer boneless; against his palms—no longer clammy; at the sides of his neck—pulse tripping, but strong enough to be going on with; over his chest—rising, falling, rising again with real steadiness, clear and true; framing his face, color in it, and staring into his eyes, no longer fever-glazed, and Steve feels himself start to fall apart at the sight of Bucky’s own eyes beginning to water, and he doesn’t want to fall apart, doesn’t want to see Bucky cry—not for this, not like _this_ —and so Steve tips his head upward, leans in, and kisses Bucky with all the strength returned to him, all the love that never left.

Bucky’s still hesitant to push him too far, to test the vision of it, of _him_ , Steve can tell—so Steve’s the one who pulls him over to the sofa, pulls down even as Bucky fights not to put weight on Steve’s body; who curls legs around Bucky at the hips first and uses that leverage to lift up and kiss him, devour him until even Steve’s recovered lungs can’t take the strain and he has to break away, gasping, and Bucky’s eyes are full of fear again, goddamnit, and Steve can only shake his head and focus on regaining his breath as quick as he can, using the space to hike his legs up to Bucky’s elbows, and then his biceps: needing help to get high enough to hook around his shoulders: an invitation.

A fucking _plea_ , because he _needs_.

“Stevie—”

“Please, Buck,” Steve pants, and he can almost feel the wide-stretch of his pupils as he watches Bucky try to fight the want in him, bright and fierce and _right_ , goddamnit.

So right.

“But Steve—”

Steve grabs Bucky’s arm more forcefully than strictly necessary, but to prove a point in it; he brings Bucky’s hand to his chest, where it lived too many hours through the last week as a touchstone, a warning bell to touch the last and measure the worst: Steve’s holds Bucky’s hand against his chest as he pants, and his heart _pounds_ but all for need. Just for _this_.

“ _Please_.”

And Steve’s not one to beg, not one to push or give too much of himself out in the open but with Bucky, right here, there’s no hesitation, no question.

He wants to feel his heartbeat give and take to the rhythm of the way Bucky chooses to move inside him. He needs to feel Bucky everywhere he can, to know they’ve weathered the storm one more time to settle here, upon a shore that’s just their own.

And because Bucky knows better, is wiser, takes fewer risks and values Steve more than he ought: because Steve loves him, and Bucky knows it makes him that much more reckless, Bucky bites his own lip hard enough to bleed, tries to fight it.

But because Bucky loves him back, and needs just as bad, he gives him. He kisses Steve for all he’s worth, traps their hands between their chests and by the time he’s worked Steve open enough to thrust in full, Steve realises he’s never yet been close enough to death as to see the face of God, because if he had been, then what he sees in that very moment would feel familiar, and it isn’t.

It is _blinding_ , and perfect, and it reminds Steve why he bothers clinging to his failing body, because there is this in the world, there is Bucky against his skin and in a heart that’s nothing physical but made entirely of feeling, of _Bucky_ : it is everything, and this is everything, and Steve comes hard with his head thrown back and his neck bared to the motion of Bucky’s lips around Steve’s name at his throat, over and over as Bucky spills hot inside him.

Steve’s heart doesn’t calm straight away, never could do—Bucky’s curled against him, though, presses tight and still keeping watch just in case. Steve’s fingers find their way into Bucky’s sweat-limp hair, massaging gently as he relishes the simple pleasure of it all, what it means to be alive. Just like this. 

It’s the fact that he’s lost in that thought, that haze of soft joy that it takes him longer to notice the way Bucky’s breath is heavy, still. The way the dampness on Steve’s chest isn’t drying as they calm but getting wetter; the way it’s soft, and subtly, but Bucky’s shaking against his chest.

 _Jesus_.

“Buck?” Steve ventures the ask, barely a breath but Bucky’s hands around him tighten, just a little, just enough and he’s apparently convinced of Steve’s wellbeing to the point of clinging tight, of pressing hard against Steve’s ribs and letting hot, shaking breaths tease Steve’s nipples as he struggles for air, for words.

“Buck, what is it? What’s—”

“You’re _okay_.”

And Steve figured maybe it was something like that, in theory. The way it’s gasped, though; the way Bucky’s shaking with it, lips trembling against Steve’s skin: Steve wasn’t prepared for the way it’d _feel_ , in the flesh.

“You don’t know what it’s like, Stevie,” Bucky’s breathes straight down Steve’s sternum, like he holds Steve together, stiches him up at his seams and he’s trembling, he’s coming apart and it _hurts_. “You don’t know what it’s like to...”

And Bucky trails off, voice tight and breaths short as he presses lips to the thin stretch of Steve’s skin across his ribs: still closer to the surface for too many days where he couldn’t stomach anything solid, still a stark reminder of something so close to hand; so close to loss.

“I didn’t think it’d change anything,” Bucky whispers, shivers and curls into Steve all the deeper, all the more desperate; “‘cause I don’t love you more or less for having said it, for having heard it, for us being…”

And Steve knows, somehow, deep in his bones—more there than from all the proof, all the evidence he’s had from years of seeing it, before either of them knew what it was—but he knows that Bucky’s not shirking naming what they are for any reason other than it’s not the thing that fits inside words. Whatever they are, it’s bigger’n that. 

“I didn’t think it’d be worse, now,” Bucky murmurs, voice broken enough to cut Steve through with its pieces; “but Steve, you gotta know.”

Bucky cups Steve’s cheek as he lifts his head, eyes rimmed in red.

“Dreaming about your lips and not just guessing at their shape,” he drags the pad of a thumb against the curve of Steve’s lower lip; “thinking about your taste and not just taking a stab in the dark,” Steve flicks his tongue out on instinct, like an affirmation he can’t justify or name.

“Feeling this,” Bucky’s hand flattens, palm flush against the pump of Steve’s heart; “only when it’s flirtin’ with leavin’ me, versus when it’s beatin’ with _having_ me, _Steve_ —”

His voice breaks and his face crumples, and he buries his face hot and wet in Steve’s neck as he gasps out, raw:

“It was _worse_.”

“Buck, I,” Steve starts, hands on the back of Bucky’s head holding him close, but what do you say to that? What _can_ he say to that, and more: he knows he’s selfish, to have asked Bucky to stick with him this far, but to lay heart and soul down on a bet you’ll lose? To ask him to stay through _worse_?

Fuck.

“I’m—”

“I wouldn’t trade you for anything, Steve.” Bucky says it, prays it straight into the pulse at Steve’s throat like he knows Steve’s heart inside and out, for what it says and what it doesn’t. “I’d give my life for yours ten times over, you know that.”

Steve swallows hard, swallows back his own tears; Bucky kisses the motion through his throat, lashes like feathers on the skin.

“But I just,” he breathes, and Steve shivers. “I didn’t expect how much it’d mean. How hard it’d hit me,” and Bucky raises up again, then: eyes less swollen, still red, but holding their feeling versus it falling crystalline down his cheeks. 

“You’re okay,” Bucky says slowly, like he needs to feel out the words on his lips, on his tongue to know they’re real. “You’re here, and you’re, you’re—”

“Yours,” Steve grabs Bucky’s hand and holds it back to his chest again, firm this time: no carefulness to it. Full-on, do or die. 

“I’m yours, and you’re mine,” Steve says with the force of a universal truth. “And if I ever flagged for fighting before, Buck,” and they both know he doesn’t mean in back alleys; he means in sick beds; on death’s door: “if I ever thought of giving in before this, before we...”

Steve’s breath catches, and Bucky’s eyes widen, scared, but Steve surges in and claims his mouth and kisses the man he loves more than breath in his lungs and a beat in his blood for as much as he’s worth, and then some.

“Never again, Buck,” he pants against Bucky’s wet lips, stroking down the line of his jaw with the promise. “I ain’t losing this. I’m not leaving you.”

And Bucky watches him, lips parted, heart pounding, and he exhales the most perfect, impossible words that make Steve’s world go ‘round.

“I love you, Steve.”

The most beautiful, improbably truth Steve’s ever dared to hold on to.

He leans in again, and kisses Bucky all the stronger, all the more dear.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“The blood, Buck,” Steve gasps, aching; “the fucking _blood_ —”

“The serum, idiot,” Bucky cuts him off not just with words, but with a nip to Steve’s throat where he’s got Steve pinned against the door, where he’s flush against Steve’s body, chests heaving hard enough that the force of one against the other makes the oxygen run thin. “I was gonna be fine,” Bucky kisses, bites, and kisses again along Steve’s clavicle as Steve pants heavier, needier: “I _am_ fine.”

“Yeah, well, fucking forgive me if it still felt like my heart gave out watching you go down like you were bleeding out, watching all that, just, watching…” and Steve can’t finish the thought because it hurts; can’t finish the thought because Bucky’s sucking hard at the notch between Steve’s collarbones, now; lips drawing the pulse there to the surface, into his mouth like he can swallow it and make it his.

As if he needs to. As if he ever did.

“C’mere,” Bucky purrs against Steve’s skin, and fuck, but that’s never failed to send a shudder up Steve’s spine, never failed to pool anticipation in the pit of his stomach and lower; lower as Bucky pulls him, coaxes him away from the door.

“Let me do,” and he maneuvers Steve, who goes willingly, onto the bed, splays him out and sprawls over him, peels Steve’s undershirt up from the waist and presses a kiss between his taut nipples once they’re exposed; “this heart,” and he lingers, and that heart starts jumping like crazy, pounding like mad.

“Let me do this heart one better, yeah?” And Bucky mouths upward to Steve’s chin, Steve’s jaw, Steve’s mouth as he strips him from his shirt, as he reaches down to work Steve’s pants down in a single practiced tug as he explores the familiar territory of Steve’s mouth like an undiscovered country: eager and enthralled, and god—Steve can’t even process the idea of losing this. Not ever again.

“Mmm,” Bucky hums, tossing the rest of Steve’s clothes to the floor, and Steve isn’t sure when Bucky stripped himself, but they’re skin to skin, now, with Bucky straddling him with those impossible thighs, tight and warm and trembling already, hands on Steve’s calves to prompt what Steve’s already doing, hooking legs over Bucky’s broad shoulders, safe and sure and lost in the feral grin that’s stretching those lips, lighting that face: fucking perfect. Fucking _gorgeous_. 

And Steve can think of about fifty different things to expect for this, from them just now; from Bucky with that glint in his eyes, but he’s thrilled when Bucky slides, all yogic boneless elegance to fit his lips around the crown of Steve’s cock, to tease his slit mercilessly, no easing into the process as his right hand guides the base, little finger teasing his balls as his left hand slides lower, fingers dancing backward toward the cleft of Steve’s ass and oh.

 _Oh_.

Bucky swallows him whole, no pretense, as he circles Steve’s hole with practiced ease and devilish precision, reach up when he lifts off Steve’s shaft for a breath, catches precome and spit against his metal digits as Steve whimpers for the dual abandonment, bereft for one too many moments before Bucky delves back in, hollows cheeks around Steve’s length as he pushes in just that little bit more with new slickness, every time, and Steve’s just about to come undone every time Bucky pulls away, just at the crest of oblivion but not allowed to fall, to surrender and come apart.

And then Bucky pulls off Steve’s cock entirely, eyes Steve’s through dark lashes before kissing down Steve’s twitching cock, licking the of the vein underneath where it draws a hard line, mouthing Steve’s sac, tonguing rough until Steve moans, until Steve writhes and Steve thinks they’re ready, now; Steve figures it’s time, now, to get toward letting go.

Steve’s wrong.

Because Bucky doesn’t stop at Steve’s balls, no; he tongues just behind them and flexes impossibly, as Steve’s body innately knows to curl upward against the flat, steady path Bucky forges with the plane of his tongue, straight back to the toyed-with ring of his opening, not loose enough to breach entirely but enough, _enough_ for Bucky’s pursed lips to match the circumference; enough for the tip of that tongue to tease in, just enough to start to shake Steve’s foundations and watch him rips apart.

He’s almost lost to the sensation, by the time Bucky raises up; Steve’s pulse is a mallet, is a battering ram, faster than any men by them two could withstand, and he meets Bucky’s eyes in a haze, can’t catch his breath; doesn’t want to.

He damn well _growls_ as he uses the leverage of his legs around Bucky’s arms to surge up, to slide his knees nearer Bucky’s waist and flip them, swift and sure, and the grin on Bucky’s lips tells him all he needs to know.

 _This_ was where they were always going to end up.

Steve’s caught in the moment, in the primal need to touch and feel and _know_ , pawing at Bucky restlessly, _relentless_ to ensure he’s as fine as he seem, to prove the severed veins, the nicked arteries, the torn skin has healed, is safe, that his lungs are filling and his blood is pumping and staying where it belong, and Steve’s eyes don’t follow the paths of his hands because he’s enthralled a little by the sight of Bucky prepping himself with leisure, with ease, letting Steve confirm what he needs as long as he needs it.

And he needs it, he does, but only as long as it takes for Bucky to be ready for Steve to take him, for Steve to _know_ what he needs in every inch of him, every cell of his body and every beat of both their hearts. 

Bucky’s pupils dilate, and Steve knows. 

Bucky tilts back, and his hands grip tight to push Steve deeper even just as Steve begins to breach.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Steve moans as he settles into Bucky’s heat, as Bucky clenches methodically as Steve settles, bottoms out until he brushes Bucky’s prostate, prompting the shudder, the sharp keen that catches in Steve’s blood, in his breath as he starts to thrust, starts to relish the feel of Bucky’s pulse around his length, his own pace lazier, hard but drawn out to feel more beats push against him, draw him toward his own peak all the quicker: proof.

 _Proof_.

Steve comes hard, just this side of blinding; before Bucky, but not by much. Steve falls just to Bucky’s side, boneless, and he doesn’t fight with Bucky nudges him onto his back and sprawls full-bodied, limbs askew across Steve’s entire frame, slick with his own seed already and dragging Steve’s along with every jostle he makes to get comfortable, and Steve can’t help but to wrap him in his arms as best he can at the angle; can’t help but touch the now-invisible wounds that nearly brought him down just to watch, just to see.

He can’t help but trace them, just to be _sure_.

“Fuck you, asshole,” Steve breathes, as soon as he’s felt the last of the soft-lines of almost-healed flesh beneath his hands; Bucky’d been an idiot, a fucking _idiot_ , drawing that knife toward his body instead of Steve’s, like that was better, that that could _ever be better_.

Bucky snorts, nuzzles under Steve’s chin. 

“I mean, sure, but,” he stretches, sighs deep. “Near death experiences are tiring, Stevie,” he whines, petulant, but Steve can feel his grin, the fucking prick. “Let a man rest a second, Jesus.”

Steve tugs at Bucky’s hair; a warning.

“Don’t you _dare_ do that to me again.”

Bucky raises his chin, glances up at Steve, half apology and half innocence as he asks:

“Do what?”

Steve’s eyes narrow, and Bucky’s gaze never leaves his as he shimmies down, just a little, just enough to breathe hot against Steve’s chest, to drag his lower lip against the bud of Steve’s nipple.

“This?”

And he grazes his teeth there, first, before he sucks, before he nips, and Jesus Christ.

Fucking _asshole_.


	11. Perpetuity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve just looks at him, eyes overfull, and Bucky lets himself soak in that, lets himself wait until it seeps into his bones, until Steve speaks with his whole unfathomable self in the words:
> 
> “You are my heart and my soul and I don’t know how I ever managed breathing without you.”
> 
> Bucky swallows hard against the prickling behind his eyes.
> 
> “Thank god you did,” Bucky whispers. “Thank god we both did."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To each and every one of you, for coming along on this ride: thank you so very, very much.

Steve’s kind of a romantic at heart, so when he’s panting heavy ( _You know_ , Bucky’d said when Steve had started losing his breath, after Bucky’d been convinced enough of the reality of Steve’s new body, Steve’s strong lungs, not to fear it, or else, not to fear it too much; Bucky’d said, with a palm on Steve’s heaving chest: _You know, I was a little afraid when we started this_ , and he rolled his hips to underscore the point, _I was a little afraid it wouldn’t faze you, wouldn’t do a damn thing to you, like this,_ and he’d stroked down Steve’s chest to the cut of his hips, and Steve had shivered, and Bucky had grinned—not just woolfish but genuinely pleased—before he’d rocked against Steve harder and leaned down to make his breath come tighter, faster in taking away the oxygen and replacing it with his lips on Steve’s and fuck oxygen, who even likes oxygen, what was the point of inventing oxygen when there are _Bucky’s lips_ )—

Steve’s kind of a romantic at heart, see. So he’s panting heavy, and Bucky’s collapsed on Steve’s newly-defined chest, newly-able, _safely_ , to _hold_ Bucky’s weight without Bucky holding back, a fact Steve pro. ved against Bucky’s muscle memory when he wrapped arms around Bucky's too-slim-but-not- _too_ -slim-after-fucking- _torture_ frame and pulls him flush, close after they both came harder than Steve remembers, not for the physicality of it but the way it squeezed around his fucking _soul_ and broke in shimmering pieces: _Jesus_.

Point is: he’s panting, he’s holding, he’s got Bucky pressed up against his slick skin, his heavy-thumping heart that’s gonna keep _thumping_ , good God—they’re here, they’re alive, and it’s real, and Steve never understood how anyone could do this and just call it fucking; could _have_ this, and call it anything other than making _love_.

 _Not everyone has this, punk_, Bucky’d told him, once. And the memory just makes Steve cling all the tighter in the now, back from the brink of death, _not without you_ and needing so _much_ : because he almost lost this.

He almost _lost_ —

Steve shudders, and buries his face in Bucky’s hair, lips against the crown of that head and breathing in, in so he’ll never have to know what the world feels like in his chest without this man, this _man_.

“You know I’d–”

“I didn’t,” Bucky whispers, hot against Steve’s skin, sharp a little; hoarse a little. “I mean, now, after,” and Bucky kisses the hollow of Steve’s throat lightly before he leans into Steve’s chest. “I didn’t,” he huffs a breath: “ _know_.”

Steve breathes slow for a second through the sensation of Bucky, hale and whole and _here_ , _his_ , before trying to make sense of the words.

Except they don’t make sense.

“What?”

“I mean,” Bucky turns his head, and presses close to Steve’s chest, Steve’s flesh and bones; “I’d _hoped_.”

“What,” Steve still doesn’t follow, Steve still can’t figure out what the _hell_ Bucky’s trying to speak against his still-just-heaving chest, lungs straining again now for the strange hint of something unthinkable, something _wrong_ in these words that Steve cannot understand from that heart, off those lips he cannot live without. 

“Bucky, what are you talking about?”

“I,” Bucky turns his face upward, hair mussed and eyes wide, but something in them that stings between Steve’s ribs like the drag of a razor. “What were you gonna say?”

“I was gonna say the obvious,” Steve answers slowly. “That I’d fall apart without you, if I lost you, if you hadn’t,” Steve’s voice catches, and he blinks too fucking fast. “I don’t know what I’d do. I don’t know how I could, how I could—”

“Steve—”

“ _Be_.”

Bucky’s flushed cheeks go a little pale as he lifts up, as he reaches to frame Steve’s face.

“Don’t say that,” Bucky breathes, a hiss; his hands tremble just a little, just enough. “Babydoll, don’t you say that.”

“I’m a shitty liar, Buck,” Steve covers Bucky’s hands and threads fingers against his own face. “You know that.”

“We’re at _war_ , Stevie,” Bucky’s thumbs line Steve’s jaw, span the whole of his countenance. “You can’t, if I—”

“No,” Steve growls, gasps, swallows every sob that’s ever tried to grip his chest and rip his heart out on the threat of taking something bigger, of losing something more. “Just, _no_.”

He draws Bucky’s hands from his cheeks and uses them to pull Bucky up and against him, chest to chest still where they sit, now, as Steve captures his mouth just to feel, just to _know_ until his breath calms. Until the world goes right against such images, such terrible, unbearable thoughts. 

It’s between one kiss and the next, long and peppered with breaks just for air, when Bucky’s gasp sound like a laugh, tight and wondering and perfect and _yet_.

“What?” Steve asks, cautious; reluctant to pull away, ever, but needing to know, feeling that this is a greater, more deadly thing than something he can afford to ignore.

“Nothin’,” Bucky shakes his head and leans back in, and oh, but that mouth on Steve’s is almost enough to deter him, to make Steve give in and just hold, just taste, just let Bucky seep into him, all that he is and ever was, ever could be: he’s tempted as all hell.

But Steve’s a stubborn son of a bitch. And Bucky’s a much better liar than Steve is but Steve knows all his tells, all the ways he gives himself away.

Steve figured out, long ago, that Bucky let him know those things because he trusted Steve more than he’d never want to lie to him.

“Not nothing,” Steve breaks away, pushes the point with a palm flat to Bucky’s chest, forehead pressed to Bucky’s as he catches his breath. “What did _you_ think I was saying?”

“God,” Bucky huffs again, impatient but when Steve catches the tilt of his mouth, it’s uncertain, it’s teetering on something, quivering; “ _nothing_ —”

“Don’t.” Steve braces against Bucky’s shoulders and holds him away, even as it pulls something straight behind his sternum out with the distance that makes. “Don’t lie to me, Buck, not—”

“That you love me!” Bucky says, sudden and unheralded; “That you _still_ —”

Steve looks, meets those eyes that are wide, shocked that his mouth’s betrayed him, prised open a wound without any permission; betrayed the heart and soul _in_ those eyes and Steve’s speechless for it, as much as Bucky is; but he’s also breathless, heart breaking for it, because...

“You mean, that’s,” and Steve runs the words over, plays them back, and oh, _god_.

“You didn’t know.” Steve states it: plain. Blank. Disbelieving. “You hoped, but you didn’t,” and Steve’s voice cracks, keeps doing that, and Steve doesn’t know how the body he used to have held this much _feeling_ without coming apart years ago, because this, because, because—

“You didn’t _know_.”

“Steve—”

“Look at me.”

And Bucky does. It takes a second, and Steve’s fingertip on his chin, and it’s like he reluctant, but can’t keep himself from meeting Steve’s gaze and Steve’s grateful that in the end, that pull’s enough, because if it wasn’t, if it wasn’t enough and Bucky didn’t _know_ —

Steve’s heart starts cracking, only just before his voice:

“How could you not _know_?”

“Steve,” Bucky reaches out; “I—” 

“How could you not know you’re my world, Buck?” Steve’s hands clench around Bucky’s biceps, Steve’s heart catches in his throat. “How could you not—”

“We’re not in Brooklyn, Steve!” Bucky says with real feeling; not angry, exactly, but like Steve’s the one who can’t see reason, can’t face facts and that’s stupid, that’s all the stupid in the world that Bucky’s taken and brought here between them because the only fact that’s ever mattered is that Steve Rogers loves Bucky Barnes.

The _only_ fact.

“The world’s bigger now, and you’re...” Bucky trails, mouth moving without sound, and Steve jumps for it.

“I’m _what_?”

“Steve, you don’t need, you don’t—”

“Don’t need,” Steve cuts him off, tries to find that thread before it unravels any farther. “Don’t need _you_?”

Bucky’s face, stony as it’d look to anyone else, tells Steve everything he needs to know.

Jesus _Christ_.

“Steve,” Bucky starts, and Steve knows that tone, and the look that starts to thaw in those eyes, the one that takes care of Steve, that see where _Steve_ even so much as bruises when Bucky himself could be bleeding out unseen, and fuck, _fuck_ , just;

“Bucky, how could you—”

“Well it’s true!”

And Steve knows that look, too; that tone. Steve knows because that’s the one where Bucky’s reached the end of his tether. Where Steve’s pushed too far, where Bucky’s too full-up with feeling, for good or ill—and even now, with muscle and strength, Bucky’s a force of nature that Steve’ll never be able to hold at bay; wouldn’t want to.

And he knows when it’s coming.

“Look at you,” Bucky’s hand gestures broadly. “Everything you’ve ever been in here,” he touches, maybe more pushes at Steve’s chest; “made the way you were meant for, all over. The world at your fingertips, Steve, and me? I’m just, I’m just,” and Bucky shakes his head, smile on his lips so fucking resigned that it twists Steve up inside just to see the hints of. 

“I’m just James Barnes, and I’m not—”

And Steve won’t have that. Steve won’t hear that; he can’t.

So he presses his lips to Bucky’s and stops those lies before they start.

“You’re just my whole fucking heart, you idiot,” Steve breathes, _bites_ into Bucky lips. 

“And yeah, I needed you for practical reasons,” Steve says simply, because he’s stupid, but not about that. “The kinds of reasons that made me cringe for how much they took a toll on you, how much of a burden it made me on someone who was too _good_ —”

Oh, but that’s when the give changes to take; the power shifts and Bucky’s pushing, Bucky’s proving his point with his lips, his tongue:

“You were never a—”

But Steve’s emboldened now by the most significant, most _necessary_ thing in all the world, that’s ever been, that’s ever mattered, and so he pushes, so he sucks Bucky’s lower lip harder and draws a moan before he pulls away, growls before he starts to come apart at the very thought, let alone the reality that Bucky could ever, ever _think_ —

“Do you honestly think that’s what made me _need_ you?”

The silence, beyond just their breaths, says everything Steve needs. It wrenches hard at Steve’s heart from either side: unforgiving.

“Fuck,” Steve chokes, the agony of it starting to well up; “ _fuck_ , you, you’ve…”

“Stevie,” Bucky exhales soft, moves again to cradle Steve’s cheek. 

“ _Buck_ ,” Steve shakes his head but he’s weak, still, because this is the kind of heart that a serum could never touch, could never make strong enough against itself because it needs, and it’s Bucky’s, and so Steve leans into that touch for all he’s fucking worth.

“You can be anything. Do anything. _Have_ anything and maybe I was, maybe I can remind you of home, where you came from,” Bucky tells him, a stream of words that are too fast and too sudden to be anything but rooted deep, fucking _hell_ ; “but Steve, what _more_ do I, how can I even think to compete with—”

“This.”

The instant Steve’s hand meets the side of Bucky’s neck Bucky stills, quiets; the moment Steve’s fingers measure the pulse there and trail down to the dip between Bucky’s collarbones, heel of his palm guiding the now-broad span of his hand right over the heady clench-and-give of Bucky’s heart.

“I have lost so many moments, hours,” Steve murmurs, leans in to press his mouth to Bucky’s jaw, to hide his face for this because he can’t, it’s too _much_. “Trying to understand it, trying to understand you, what you see, in…”

Steve breathes in deep; steadies himself and breathes Bucky _in_ to set him to rights. The only thing that can.

“You look at me the same,” Steve whispers. “Not like anyone else who saw me, before and after. Not the ones, the few who understand, or who thought I _wasn’t_ worthless or, or…”

Steve doesn’t know how to say it. Steve doesn’t know how to put into words that Bucky’s the _only_ thing he _knows_.

So he makes himself be brave. He makes himself lean back. He makes himself show, as best he can, the things he can’t fit into words.

“This is new.” 

He traces across the newly roughened-but-unfreckled line of Bucky’s cheekbone—dotted gorgeously in the Brooklyn summers but not here; not so soft, either.

Bucky’s absolutely still. Steve doesn’t even think he takes a breath. His eyes are so wide Steve’s desperate to drown in them, but no. Later.

This first.

“This, is new,” Steve murmurs, forces himself to tremble a touch over a scar from Austria, proof of what Steve couldn’t stop, why Steve can have every muscle, every strength and it would never be enough if it didn’t keep Bucky safe, keep Bucky here, keep Bucky—

No. Later.

 _This_. _First_.

“This is growing,” Steve says softly, playing with Bucky’s hair where it’s starting to flirt with regulation. “Well, look at that,” Steve feels his lips quirk as the strands against his fingers betray a cowlick leaning toward the left, instead of the right as it always had. “Never grew like that before.”

Bucky laughs, just a little; a wet sound. Steve’s hands go back to frame his face, to catch his eyes and keep them.

“What is it that’s running through this head, huh?” Steve exhales; sharp. “That you’re, what, less? Boring? Not interesting enough? Hell, not,” Steve stumbles on even bringing the unthinkable into the world in words:

“Not _enough_?”

Bucky’s lips part. Steve gives in, then, to the need to lick them, to suck them between his own.

“You will never stop being,” Steve gasps into Bucky’s waiting mouth, “the most fascinating, most,” he licks in deeper, and doesn’t fight the way he moans when Bucky’s tongue slides under his own, coaxes him deeper.

“The most _unbelievable_ thing I’ve ever known,” Steve gasps between their lips, as Bucky surges up against him, as Steve snakes arms around Bucky’s back and pulls him closer.

“Holding you against me,” Steve pants against his open mouth, as Bucky’s hands cup under Steve’s ass where they’re both lifted up on their knees; “will never stop being the biggest adventure I was ever built for, then, and now,” he tilts his mouth to chase where Bucky moves to nip down his jaw, because to lose Bucky’s taste right now would be a sin; might just end him. 

“I hate that I’ll never completely understand what your eyes say, not everything,” and Steve’s own eyes flutter shut with the way Bucky consumes him, the way Bucky’s hands grasp his hips and trail up, steady and perfect up to Steve’s neck in time to feel the way Steve whimpers when Bucky sucks on his lower lip. 

“Not entirely, not always,” Steve gasps, tries to finish, because he _needs_ to finish. “But I love that I’ll never be able to stop trying to figure it out, because you are my,” and oh, but Bucky grinds up against Steve; “you are, you’re—”

“Stevie,” Bucky breathes straight into Steve’s mouth. “Steve, c’mon—”

And yeah. Yeah, sometimes actions speak louder.

These actions in particular.

Steve’s hand joins Bucky’s together around their lengths and it’s clumsy, with both of them, but it’s also necessary. Right.

They come quick, in a mess of feeling and friction and confessions that act like promises that their bodies make and remake for them in those moments, those breaths.

So very _right_.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” Steve pants, and Bucky’s collapsed against him again, now: boneless but so close, held and holding, no space between, their lungs gasping together, rising in tandem, pressing the thunder of hearts flush. “You’re the only thing that’s ever made any sense. The only thing I have in this world to fight for, instead of against.”

Bucky shudders, and he kisses Steve’s neck with a singular purpose: to have. To hold.

Steve’s getting ahead of himself, yeah. Or: maybe not.

Maybe not _entirely_. Maybe not with this.

“Do you get it, now?” Steve breathes. “Do you know, now, what this means? What you mean? _Always_?”

“I,” Bucky starts, but this time, Steve does understand those eyes. He hears everything they’re trying to say; struggling to speak.

And that’s okay. That’s who they are. That’s what they have.

This.

“I will always love you,” Steve whispers, and he thinks that the same way what they do will never be anything less than making love, these words will never be less than a vow made before God Himself. 

“I will always want you. Have always. Will always. You will never stop being the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen, the most precious thing I’ve ever touched, the most incredible thing I’ve ever known, this, us, we—”

And while Steve thinks to reach, Bucky’s already got both Steve’s hands in his own.

“It’s never gonna fade. It’s never going to be something I forget, or stop finding new ways to fall into, deeper, _truer_ , _with_ you. So long as you’ll have me, so long as you’ll come with me and, and,” Steve starts to stammer because Bucky’s looking at him with something like wonder, tinging a whole lot of love that seems brighter than it ever has before, and Steve’s eyes are keen enough, now, to see that color, that shine, and it’s blinding. It warms every space inside him that seemed too big now to ever fill, but of course Bucky would fill it.

Because Bucky has always been more than _enough_.

“If you didn’t get that, Buck, if you missed it all these years, or thought something changed that?” Steve huffs something like a laugh, self-deprecating, maybe a more than a little self-loathing for whatever he did in failing to prove to this man his worth, his absolutely essential _presence_ in order for Steve to _breathe_. “Well, fuck, if you didn’t know?”

He presses his weight up just a little closer, spent cocks caught in the mess of _making love_ , goddamnit, and nothing ever less.

“If you didn’t?” Steve breathes in close; “ _Now_ you do.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It's with laughter that he falls—of all the things that could characterise, that could describe the utterly manic euphoria that is _this_ , here and now, with Steve bouncing upon impact just next to Bucky, hand settling unplanned, unthought, innate over the very center of Bucky's chest as it heaves, as his heart trills out an unrepentant symphony that can only be made of wonderment, of joy: it’s with laughter that they land on the bed, fully-clothed, just barely touching, hands and thighs, but even that suffused with the knowledge of absolute devotion as they ride out the post-battle adrenaline that runs so much stronger in them, that lasts as long as it does in any normal person and leaves them giggling with the high of it.

“That was absolutely fucking insane.”

“It was,” Steve agrees, looking over at Bucky and pressing his lips together to stop from bursting out again, but he fails.

And Bucky follows, cackling like a maniac as he rolls over and wrestles Steve toward the pillows, Steve giving as good as he gets as they tussle, and it’s laughter.

It’s laughter because this is what they are, who they are. This is what they have, always did. Always will.

Bucky lets Steve pin him, victorious, and it’s with less of the heaving laughter but all of the sheer bliss left in its stead that he reaches up and cups Steve's face and just looks at him, breathes heavy with him: touches his skin and tastes him in the air, fill his lungs with his scent and knows there could never be anything like this, not anywhere.

This is once. This is once, and this is _theirs_.

Bucky stares into those eyes, happy to drift in them and play at getting lost, save that he can’t, he’s tried, and Steve doesn’t let Bucky get lost, not anymore, not for anything. And Steve gazes back into his, studying them, marveling at them like they’re new, just as much as he stares into them like they’re home.

“Whatcha thinking, punk?

Steve smiles, a little shy, a little like he has a secret that’s bigger and more precious than the entire world combined.

“Nothin’ much.”

It’s a lie, and so Bucky just keeps looking at Steve, walking the ledge of infinity in all that blue, until Steve gives in.

“Thinkin’ about you.”

“Little ol’ me?” Bucky asks, only half kidding; he’s still not used to being the center of Steve’s world, quite like this. The center has shifted for them, so many times, and yet that _Bucky_ of all people is somehow the point of orbit is, is—

Well. It’s something Bucky can’t really put into words, if he’s honest. It’s something Bucky can’t sort of, can’t name, can’t fathom, save that it’s everywhere, and everything, and the truth that he lives and breathes for.

“Little ol’ you,” Steve says, voice soft, like a caress in itself. “Little ol’ you who takes up all of me, more than the whole world and then some. Yeah,” Steve huffs, leaning down to kiss him. “Little ol’ _you_.”

And maybe Bucky flushes a little, and maybe his heart goes a little fluttery. Maybe.

“Like you’re anything less for me,” Bucky grouses a little, overcome with feeling and uncomprehending of how after everything, _everything_ , Steve still seems to not quite _get_ that.

“No, no,” Steve’s quick to derail Bucky’s well-worn rant on the topic; good. Good, because maybe that means the simply truth was finally getting through that thick fucking head. “I just, what I mean, it’s…”

And Steve’s never been comfortable with words, Bucky knows that, so he reaches out to touch, frames Bucky’s face in his hands and splays his thumbs around to stroke down his cheekbones, and the blood in Bucky’s veins shivers, trembles: feels incredible, and so fucking alive. 

“M’an artist,” Steve mumbles, mostly to himself, but Bucky hangs on those words because Steve might not be the best with words, but sometimes he throws caution to the wind with that as much as he always does with everything else, and Bucky remembers one time, a little too much alcohol in his slim frame way back when, when Steve had reached up and framed his face just like this, clumsier but still the same as they’d eased down onto their shared mattress, 

“Can’t say it, but when I see it, can, can,” Steve had giggled a little, and stroked across Bucky’s cheeks. 

“Can find it it,” Steve signed, thumb going to Bucky’s lips, dragging them open. “Know a masterpiece when I see it.”

And Bucky’d felt his cheeks heat under Steve’s hands, and the smile he’d got in response was over-giddy with the booze but blinding nonetheless; still seared into Bucky’s consciousness as one of the precious examples of the aim of his every breathing moment: to make Steve that happy, often as he can.

“But I couldn’t,” Steve had slurred a little; “never could, with you.”

“You sketch me all the time,” Bucky had protested easing Steve down all the way upon his pathetic excuse of a pillow—prickly and pressed flat but the only one between the two of them. “Books-full,” Bucky’s pointed out, and not without the necessary warning: “ _dangerous_.”

Not that Steve’d ever heeded it. Not that Bucky ever expected him to, or selfishly, even _wanted_ him to at the base-core of his being. Because if he had, he’d be betraying the self, the _Steve_ Bucky’d fallen for, and held closer and clearer, more sacred than his own heart and soul. 

“Can’t _capture_ it, though,” Steve had whined, a little hysterical; they both should have known better than letting him have that last pint. “Can make it know that you’re it, but I can’t,” he shakes his head, a pouts a little too adorably; “can’t reflect it, can just hold it, here, between,” he’d bit his lips and steadied his hands on Bucky’s face with all the willpower he could gather. 

“Against me, beneath, everywhere,” he’d breathed, true and full in a way that’d made Bucky shiver before he’d sighed, and Bucky’d lowered himself against Steve, full of need as Steve had whispered:

“ _Everything_.”

They’d fallen asleep in minutes, but after that Bucky’s known, ever since, what it means when Steve frames his face, just like this.

And Bucky doesn’t know what he ever did to deserve that marveling wonder, that magnitude of love. Then, and now.

 _Still_.

“This.”

Bucky’s wrenched back to the now, not unwillingly, or unhappily: and really, he’d never drifted all that much. The rooting of his being has been Steve’s touch for long enough to know that he should have known better; he’ll never really drift, and thank god for that.

Bucky quirks a brow as soon as he catches up; a question. What did Steve mean?

Steve fidgets a little under the question; but eventually the indefatigable soul of him, the one that doesn’t back down, wins out.

Always. 

“You never stop looking at me like I’m something new,” Steve says, the effort to make the something he can’t speak easily clear with the words he’s so clumsy with. “Like I’m something that surprises you, that makes you _want_ as hard as the first time, even after _all_ this time.”

Bucky blinks, and brings his hands up to cover Steve’s, slides his fingers between Steve’s own and turns them, holds them in kind.

“’Course I do.” Of course he does. How that can be a question, can _still_ be a question astounds him; stings right down the sternum in a way that resonates through his bones.

And Steve shakes his head, disbelieving not of Bucky’s conviction, exactly, but of the fact that it can possibly exist at all.

“ _How_?”

Bucky scoffs a little. “You don’t think I notice you lookin’ the same way at me?”

But Steve just shakes his head, and smiles ruefully.

“Buck,” he says slowly; “you were always a surprise.”

And in that very moment, Bucky’s not sure what to say to that.

“When you first kissed me,” Steve says, lashes fluttering; “when suddenly everything I was afraid of was nothing more than that _feeling_ just tingling down my spine, and your lips on me, when everything I wanted with every breath was suddenly _mine_ ,” Steve’s voice doesn’t quite crack but gives, and the smile that curls his lips makes crinkles around his closed eyes, and he is the most beautiful thing in all the world.

In _all_ the _world_.

“When you held on for me,” Steve whispers, and Bucky things of that slab in the cold; and then a deeper cold that tainted his soul; “when you stayed with me,” and Bucky thinks of Brooklyn when it was too hot, and Steve’s breath wheezed and Bucky pressed cold cloths against his chest; when it was too cold and he wrapped Steve’s frame in whatever passed for a blanket that he could get this hands on.

“When you came _back_ to me,” Steve breathes out in a shudder, and Bucky knows that one: the long road of that ice in his heart, that stain on his soul—the wearing of it away. The melting of its grasp.

“I feel like,” Steve opens his eyes, but averts them, like he has to look at something neutral when he says things that are too big; Bucky gets that. 

“Like I was ruled by the heart in my chest before I knew what it meant. For the worst reasons,” Steve says, reaching to that point of origin, that unforgiving maker of demands beneath his ribs and Bucky’s hand follows by rote.

“And then you came,” Steve covers Bucky's hand in the space of a breath, caught now between both his own. “And before I even understood what was happening, I knew it had changed.”

Bucky’d known it too. Young as they were, innocent as they’d been: in his own body, he’d known it too. 

“And then, you told me,” and Steve swallows hard, visible, and Bucky knows exactly what he means, the very moment, because Bucky’d been the one to say it first, not necessarily because he was the brave one but because he was the one who needed, who was desperate in the face of Steve too pale with a chest that rose too shaky and too slow. 

“Then you held me and it was _more_ , when I didn’t think there could ever be more when I saw you, when I held you back and that first time, Buck, that first time I ever felt the life in you against the life in me, I just,” Steve sucks in a breath and holds it, steadies himself before he lets it out slow.

“I was always ruled by this, and you,” Steve holds Bucky’s hand all the tighter between his, and the wrists press close enough that Bucky can feel that pulse, tangible where his hearing can just pick up the sound of the beat like a metronome made flesh and blood, steady but swift and sweet as well:

“You stopped me ever wishing otherwise.”

And Bucky has to bite his lip to keep the feeling from bursting forth, from wrecking him any harder, any more fully: Bucky has to bow his head to rest at Steve’s throat just to feel that heart in him shake in one more spot, to feel it strong in one more place.

“And I’ve never understood the why,” Steve starts, and there’s less self-loathing in it than there used to be, but it’s replaced but an amazement that, given everything, rings just as sad: “when you could have had anyone, could have _held_ anyone, but—”

“Stop.”

And it’s Bucky’s hands now that frame his masterpiece, his world, his reason to fight the darkness around him that was injected into his own veins to beat and freeze: his reason, full stop.

“Just,” Bucky shakes his head and leans in, kisses Steve hard and quick before leaning his forehead against Steve and sliding one hand round the back of Steve’s neck, cradling the base of his skull. 

“You make me proud,” Bucky breathes, eyes closed as he presses Steve against him in the hope that it’ll ground him in the words, in all the things the words can’t keep. “For what you do, but so much more for what you are.”

Steve’s inhale trembles, and his own hands move to brace Bucky’s biceps, those hands trembling the same.

“You make me strong, quick as you make me weak in the knees and hot in my blood and soft and sweet and _safe_ in my chest,” Bucky says, quickly as his tongue can catch against, not because he plans to, but because once he starts, he doesn’t know how to stop. “Every moment, of every day, and you never stop, and when you change?” It’s then that he looks up, almost crossed through his lashes so close, but he can see the shine in Steve’s eyes and it drives him; those eyes.

“When you change, Stevie, _that_ never changes.” 

And if Bucky’s voice is starting to get hoarse, no matter. If Steve’s shaking a little bit harder, Bucky just has to keep going so that it’s said, and it’s there, and Steve knows, and then they can worry about the shaking, if the shaking doesn’t fade, ‘cause as much as Stevie’s shaking against Bucky’s skin, Bucky’s voice is threatening to catch on every word on the shaking in his ribs, threatening to give. 

“You want to know why I look at you the way I do?” Bucky murmurs, taking Steve’s hands in his own now and bringing them to his lips. “‘Cause you’re _always_ new, you’re always sparkling, shining like you just came into the world somehow despite all the hurt and all the scars, and,” Bucky shakes his head and smiles, just a little. “And I’m not good at saying it, y’know?”

“Bullshit,” Steve huffs, and Bucky laughs, a little choked. 

“No better than you, punk, how about that?” Bucky proposes, and Steve himself chokes out a laugh. “But I’m not good with how it all falls into place in words but every time I think there’s no way I can live through what it’d have to do to my heart to fill any more, you stretch it.” Bucky drags his lips against the heels of Steve’s palms. “You make it do the impossible. You find a way, just being you.”

And Steve’s kissing him, like it’s the last thing on earth to do. And Bucky thinks it probably is, for Bucky at least—if the world was ending, Bucky’d want it to end against Steve’s lips, inside Steve’s taste.

“You hurt so sweet,” Bucky gasps, because the words had built up, inept and bumbling and wholly inadequate as they are; once they’ve built up he can’t wholly stop them, and he’s been done, for a very long time, with the task of stopping something so human in himself.

And he’s never been one to stop trying to tell Steve how much he matters, how much he’s loved.

“And every minute I think I can’t love you more you teach me, I learn how and I grow that little bit bigger to hold it, somehow, somewhere I don’t know and can’t see, ‘cept for you,” and Bucky’s trying to fit the words between the way Steve devours him, the way Bucky moves and sucks and devours in kind; “Except for how I see it, in you, and I—”

And Steve’s surging up against him, hungry and a little bit wild and Bucky meets him, no hesitation and to it, just as eager as Steve’s hand settles at his hips and Bucky reaches around Steve’s shoulder blades and presses them down, kneads the muscle almost by accident in the immediacy of getting Steve closer, of grinding Steve down against him, all arousal and firmness and heat, and it’s just another thing that’s never grown old, never lost that flame so much more than just a spark, it was a conflagration that kept them both intact through all the cold and Bucky rocks against Steve like a touchstone and the last solid thing on Earth.

“Stevie,” Bucky pants, as Steve’s hands slide under the waistband of his boxers, the only clothing left between them, and rips them at the seams without remorse. “Fuck,” Bucky moans, because that’ll never stop being the hottest thing, god _damnit_.

“ _Fuck_.”

“Bucky,” Steve groans, reaching and arcing and taking them both in hand, teasing Bucky’s slit with his own pearling wetness, and Jesus _Christ_ , and Steve _wonders_ how Bucky looks at him like he’s new in every second, every heartbeat and the breaking points between.

“Oh, god,” Steve rasps, and they’ll both come quick, the pace is too fast for it to end otherwise. “Buck—”

And when Steve spills, it’s heat where Bucky’s already burning, and when he comes in kind he doesn’t bother to stop himself from falling half onto Steve's chest and revelling a little in the slickness, the intimacy, the rise and fall of their chests against one another like the perfect point of reality: the only fact to hold. 

“I fell for you in a different time, when we were different people,” Bucky murmurs into Steve’s neck once his mind has cleared, once his breath is caught to speak, stroking up and down the planes of his chest as the sweat starts to dry. 

“But the _feeling_ of that falling never changed, and never stopped,” he mouths up into Steve’s jawline, as Steve wraps an arm around to pull his body closer in. “And I will still be falling in love with you until the day I die.” 

Bucky lifts himself up on his hands to hover over Steve for a moment, to look at him when he says, damn-near vows:

“Maybe even after.”

Steve just looks at him, eyes overfull, and Bucky lets himself soak in that, lets himself wait until it seeps into his bones, until Steve speaks with his whole unfathomable self in the words:

“You are my heart and my soul and I don’t know how I ever managed breathing without you.”

Bucky swallows hard against the prickling behind his eyes.

“Thank god you did,” Bucky whispers. “Thank god we both did.”

Steve reaches up, needing, grasping the back of Bucky's head and drawing him down.

“Buck—”

“Shh,” Bucky soothes, because he knows what Steve’s feeling, knows what Steve’s working to hold because he’s holding it the same, and he lets himself fall at Steve’s side and rolls Steve to his side so that Bucky can hold him with both arms, close as he knows how.

“Let’s just,” and Bucky’s arms tighten as Steve clings to him in kind. “Like this. For now, just this, yeah?”

And Steve nods into him until they both calm, relax, go boneless against one another and their breaths grow deep and Bucky’s happy to drift into sleep alongside the man he loves for the very reason that falls from his lips before he kisses the top of Steve’s head and sighs out of a lifetime of fighting to reach this one unbelievable, incredible, foundational truth:

“We’ve got time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr](http://Hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).


End file.
